THRALL

by Susan Gevirtz

Poetry. Echoing person, place, or thing and adding a question to the definition of a noun, THRALL begs yet another is the person a verb or a verb scape. The poet dreams the poem as three-dimensional things or places that we can enter and touch yet never hold on to.

"We could try to find an answer to the first sentence of THRALL, 'is person place or person,' if we were sure it's a question. But I take the book as an enigma, its key word never spoken. Even the guess coming nearest might well land us in 'deciphretude,' not a healthy sounding state. Best, no doubt, to leave all the words as they are and, well...just listen. It's a beautiful book."—Keith Waldrop

"Is person place or person," writes Susan Gevirtz. This provocative statement—it is not a question—leads us through Thrall to the land of Intelexa and outlying realms. If Alice in Wonderland and Wallace Stevens have a daughter, here is her primary residence. She spends 'each month the chapter of a year' 'drinking of this aquarium water tincture and thereby knowing something happened. Thus reaching for the dictionary.' The Reader can hope to find herself in this Looking Glass, surrounded by the good neighbors Intellect, Lexicon, Law, and Light, opening into deep communication with sensitive and nervy maps of reading and response, a finely-tuned and attuned charting and exploration of the 'world of written words.' There is no finer dwelling than this."—Stacy Doris

Genres: Poetry

106 pages, Paperback

First published October 31, 2007

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Echoing person, place, or thing and adding a question to the definition of a noun, THRALL begs yet another question: is the person a verb or a verb scape?

In the first part of Thrall, entitled "Thrall: Chapter Book", Gevirtz creates a "verb-scape" which she names "Inexochta". The poems of "Thrall: Chapter Book" describe this abstract space - its customs and conventions...

In the land of Inexochta the beheaded face hovers above
following the body....
- Character, pg. 19


Reference suggests a solid ground. Still they continue
to do it. In the outside steppes of Inexochta an enormous
edifice built of edible aluminum is constructed at the
turn of the last season. Fat year or thin, full harvest or
meager, with or without the proper equipment, all
residents scale it, eating as they go. In the end another
town hovers, without its buildings, positing levitation
as a twin to dwelling. Later, they dive, landing by
somersault in deeply furrowed top soil. One was
overheard saying, "Photography slides right off of this"
- A Mother but Better, pg. 26


Doubtless air will uphold. This the flat landscape of
no escape. Fish under rug, tongue nailed to the wall.
They have no prisons, only public monuments....
- Light of Day, pg. 33

In the second part, "0-12 The Walk-in Books: Postscript to Thrall", Gevirtz becomes more abstract in her attempt to define this space, in her attempt to answer "What word // makes a three dimensional book?"...

Proffered pilfered

ignited stamped out remains

in the Suffice

sky biting tidings

sequestered
under

razor moon
- Time of Orders, pg. 45


Stain the words
inconsolable

the letters

oppose within
one a fight

breaks out venom's

motion

reading's solace place
- Forced Speech, pg. 65

The third part, "Deciphretude", is somehow more abstract, more ambiguous than the second part... Contrary to the title, which seems to promise that something will be "deciphered"...

my velvet, a booklet, next year I was

saying subpoenaed by doubt but

what is the depth of that how does

in inform


watching the painting with binoculars

motion detector

taking the pulse of dirt

underground workers

cherries balanced on their heads


[mistaken for procession list - -

No: Fifty-two species of birds talking
103 different tongues...
- Out of Order, pg. 83

[Rodney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thrall is the knack of Orpheus for “Reverse Marketing” the absent to the present via song—“Archaeology you can’t touch.” Better living through Deciphretude: “Flight is still not possible but/again and again the recipient experiences lift-off.”