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Archeophonics
Soulful and intricate lyrics make this Gizzi's strongest book to date
Archeophonics is the first collection of new work from the poet Peter Gizzi in five years. Archeophonics, defined as the archeology of lost sound, is one way of understanding the role and the task of to recover the buried sounds and shapes of languages in the tradition of the art, and the multitude of private connections that lie undisclosed in one's emotional memory. The book takes seriously the opening epigraph by the late great James "poetry, like music, is not just song." It recognizes that the poem is not a decorative art object but a means of organizing the world, in the words of anthropologist Clifford Geertz, "into transient examples of shaped behavior." Archeophonics is a series of discrete poems that are linked by repeated phrases and words, and its themes and nothing less than joy, outrage, loss, transhistorical thought, and day-to-day life. It is a private book of public and civic concerns.
Archeophonics is the first collection of new work from the poet Peter Gizzi in five years. Archeophonics, defined as the archeology of lost sound, is one way of understanding the role and the task of to recover the buried sounds and shapes of languages in the tradition of the art, and the multitude of private connections that lie undisclosed in one's emotional memory. The book takes seriously the opening epigraph by the late great James "poetry, like music, is not just song." It recognizes that the poem is not a decorative art object but a means of organizing the world, in the words of anthropologist Clifford Geertz, "into transient examples of shaped behavior." Archeophonics is a series of discrete poems that are linked by repeated phrases and words, and its themes and nothing less than joy, outrage, loss, transhistorical thought, and day-to-day life. It is a private book of public and civic concerns.
- GenresPoetry
108 pages, Hardcover
First published September 6, 2016
7 people are currently reading
250 people want to read
About the author
Peter Gizzi
55 books55 followersEducated at New York University, Brown University, and the State University of New York at Buffalo, poet Peter Gizzi is the author of several collections of poetry, including Threshold Songs (2011), The Outernationale (2007), and Artificial Heart (1998).
Gizzi uses both narrative and lyrical gestures to engage and question distance and light in his search for the unmapped. Reflecting on the question of whether his work is narrative or lyric, Gizzi stated in an interview with Poetry Daily, “I think I am a narrative poet—I’m just narrating my bewilderment as a citizen.”
(Source: Peter Gizzi @ The Poetry Foundation)
Gizzi uses both narrative and lyrical gestures to engage and question distance and light in his search for the unmapped. Reflecting on the question of whether his work is narrative or lyric, Gizzi stated in an interview with Poetry Daily, “I think I am a narrative poet—I’m just narrating my bewilderment as a citizen.”
(Source: Peter Gizzi @ The Poetry Foundation)
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
March 14, 2017
Peter Gizzi relies on a very ambitious, risky poetic archipelago: he reaches back in the endless chamber of lost sounds, "past lives", past "mes" to gain a foot between the past and the future. His psychic domain is overgrown with the repast of morphing consonants and vowels, and his trust in the reader is immense: he expects that they might know a few words not offered in 99 percent of the poetry written today. Even some words that have scientific underpinnings.
This, to my mind at least, is Gizzi's best collection to date, surpassing even "Threshold Songs". It has a voluble adventurousness that stitches the whole of his poetic quest together, and by joining antinomies (past, future) he actually breaks them. Recommended.
This, to my mind at least, is Gizzi's best collection to date, surpassing even "Threshold Songs". It has a voluble adventurousness that stitches the whole of his poetic quest together, and by joining antinomies (past, future) he actually breaks them. Recommended.
February 4, 2022
I don't get it. For a collection so committed to sound—archeophonics: the recovering of lost sound—I found most of the poems to be surprisingly absent of easily identifiable rhythm and sonority.
When I think of lost sound, especially in the context of poetry, I think of formal structures and oral traditions which rely heavily on legible rhythm and sonority. And there wasn't much else in the collection to suggest a different, meaningful reading of archeophonics. The eponymous poem leading the collecting is too abstract and cryptic and fire-obsessed to suggest a specific, useful reading.
Perhaps the epigraph a page before should have offered a clue?
So maybe my looking for sonority and rhythm is antithetical to Gizzi's intention? Or perhaps the clue is that I should've stopped here, because I can't really parse what the epigraph is supposed to mean in the context of music, let alone poetry (is not song just the instantiation of music and an instantiation of poetry?)
At any rate I did find several phrases that through their clunkiness do ironically exhibit poetry as not-song.
Sometimes the clunkiness manifests in single words, like in this poem which is putatively about "How to Read":
"openism" sounds awkward; reading to find "mewling" doesn't sound like a pleasant task; "giganto" sounds childish. All these phrases clash with the self-serious tone of this collection and its reception.
Have you ever come down with a "case of the punks"? Well for this awkward predicament, Gizzi awkwardly prescribes a "countertenor":
Note: don't stop to question how a countertenor is being opposed to the already contradictory bureaucracy and punks.
And then in almost every poem, Gizzi enforces clunkiness by forgoing expected pauses via elided commas and periods. There's probably something he's doing with this formally or technically, but it led to awkward reading for me. On top of this, Gizzi often splits lines after just a few syllables, further problematizing legible meter, rhyme, and pleasing prosody. Here's an example from the grossly titled "Instagrammar" poem:
Granted, Gizzi does use recurring imagery throughout the collection—the sun; light on the wood of furniture, floors, and doors; the air and its relation to the body; something about serious aesthetic experience paired with superficial technology or contemporary slang: "creepy," "cool," "Google." So there's a way in which I might have started to make sense of his work as a whole if not through singular poems. However, his looseness between lines and stanzas left the poems feeling unconnected and hollow, despite the repeated themes. This degree of loose abstraction may just be past my aesthetic tolerance, which terminates somewhere around Ocean Vuong's maximalism. Unlike some of Vuong's work—which although at first reads incomprehensible, gains meaning through rereading—Gizzi's work became more flabbergasting while rereading.
I just never got it.
When I think of lost sound, especially in the context of poetry, I think of formal structures and oral traditions which rely heavily on legible rhythm and sonority. And there wasn't much else in the collection to suggest a different, meaningful reading of archeophonics. The eponymous poem leading the collecting is too abstract and cryptic and fire-obsessed to suggest a specific, useful reading.
Perhaps the epigraph a page before should have offered a clue?
"Poetry, like music, is not just song."
—James Schuyler
So maybe my looking for sonority and rhythm is antithetical to Gizzi's intention? Or perhaps the clue is that I should've stopped here, because I can't really parse what the epigraph is supposed to mean in the context of music, let alone poetry (is not song just the instantiation of music and an instantiation of poetry?)
At any rate I did find several phrases that through their clunkiness do ironically exhibit poetry as not-song.
Sometimes the clunkiness manifests in single words, like in this poem which is putatively about "How to Read":
A world of light and a world of openism
...
A human world mewling in the dark
...
A giganto space of silence, time (52)
"openism" sounds awkward; reading to find "mewling" doesn't sound like a pleasant task; "giganto" sounds childish. All these phrases clash with the self-serious tone of this collection and its reception.
Have you ever come down with a "case of the punks"? Well for this awkward predicament, Gizzi awkwardly prescribes a "countertenor":
What if the day were a countertenor
informing us, besting bureaucracy,
offering sustenance against my case of the punks (54-55)
Note: don't stop to question how a countertenor is being opposed to the already contradictory bureaucracy and punks.
And then in almost every poem, Gizzi enforces clunkiness by forgoing expected pauses via elided commas and periods. There's probably something he's doing with this formally or technically, but it led to awkward reading for me. On top of this, Gizzi often splits lines after just a few syllables, further problematizing legible meter, rhyme, and pleasing prosody. Here's an example from the grossly titled "Instagrammar" poem:
We say how
could this be
when did this
happen that
we'll find ourselves
somewhere else
in some future
laughing, why
is it incompatible
I mean what does
it matter, whether
the ship were in
the trees or
the ground was
in the water
Granted, Gizzi does use recurring imagery throughout the collection—the sun; light on the wood of furniture, floors, and doors; the air and its relation to the body; something about serious aesthetic experience paired with superficial technology or contemporary slang: "creepy," "cool," "Google." So there's a way in which I might have started to make sense of his work as a whole if not through singular poems. However, his looseness between lines and stanzas left the poems feeling unconnected and hollow, despite the repeated themes. This degree of loose abstraction may just be past my aesthetic tolerance, which terminates somewhere around Ocean Vuong's maximalism. Unlike some of Vuong's work—which although at first reads incomprehensible, gains meaning through rereading—Gizzi's work became more flabbergasting while rereading.
I just never got it.
February 9, 2017
As I returned to school recently to study poetry, I became more interested in what was being published and winning awards in this area. So I picked up Look by Solmaz Sharif and am slowly working my way through the list of finalists for the National Book Award and Gizzi’s work was next on the list.
Archeophonics is defined as the archeology of lost sound. And the sounds of the poems are what I enjoyed most about this collection. Lines like “So singing is seeing and vision is music” (p. 34, This World Is Not Conclusion) were so amazing I just sat there staring at them and re-reading them.
“For as long as there have been soldiers / there have been poets” (p. 50, Sentence in a Synapse Field). I am grateful for both and encourage others to pick up this collection and let the sounds take you away.
Archeophonics is defined as the archeology of lost sound. And the sounds of the poems are what I enjoyed most about this collection. Lines like “So singing is seeing and vision is music” (p. 34, This World Is Not Conclusion) were so amazing I just sat there staring at them and re-reading them.
“For as long as there have been soldiers / there have been poets” (p. 50, Sentence in a Synapse Field). I am grateful for both and encourage others to pick up this collection and let the sounds take you away.
Read
October 17, 2018I read this aloud to myself and it was a very pleasing experience.
November 27, 2017
Peter Gizzi’s “Archeophonics” tears poetry down to its root and explores the way sound mixes in the mouth and in our inner ear, much like slam poetry. Gizzi is a poet “whose interest lies in articulating his experience of the world in all its disorienting glory.” This book explores the outer range of the frontier of sound and not just sight. As noted in the Foreword by Gizzi wherein he quotes James Schuyler, “Poetry, like music, is not just song.”
There are many poems here to like with the sound of music to accompany it. For instance, “A Winding Sheet for Summer” would go well with Chopin playing rag time in the background, with summer slowly unfurling her slumbering head to fall. “Antico Adagio” would go well with “Rhapsody in Blue” or anything by Leonard Bernstein. Whereas the cacophony of sound in that section entitled “Field Recordings” would do well with Aaron Copeland. I particularly liked the first stanza of “Glitter” in that group:
Faces fly by
in random litter,
as September rays
hit the lawns.
The high-lit
dry white shafts
slightly vintaging.
The bright
horizon preening
in fife air.
Wow; all I can say is “Wow” — that’s good stuff there!
One (1) star off only because I felt this book could and should have been a might bit longer. As if Peter Gizzi was warmed up pitching a “perfect game” of poetry but got pulled in the sixth inning. How about changing the name from “Archeophonics” to “Paleophonics”? Yes. There be a certain deep sounding symmetry there.
There are many poems here to like with the sound of music to accompany it. For instance, “A Winding Sheet for Summer” would go well with Chopin playing rag time in the background, with summer slowly unfurling her slumbering head to fall. “Antico Adagio” would go well with “Rhapsody in Blue” or anything by Leonard Bernstein. Whereas the cacophony of sound in that section entitled “Field Recordings” would do well with Aaron Copeland. I particularly liked the first stanza of “Glitter” in that group:
Faces fly by
in random litter,
as September rays
hit the lawns.
The high-lit
dry white shafts
slightly vintaging.
The bright
horizon preening
in fife air.
Wow; all I can say is “Wow” — that’s good stuff there!
One (1) star off only because I felt this book could and should have been a might bit longer. As if Peter Gizzi was warmed up pitching a “perfect game” of poetry but got pulled in the sixth inning. How about changing the name from “Archeophonics” to “Paleophonics”? Yes. There be a certain deep sounding symmetry there.
November 29, 2023
going to try using the full range of stars bc im always only using 3 and up... my laptop when i hover over the stars 1-5 show: "did not like it," "it was ok," "liked it," "really liked it," and "it was amazing." i'm hovering between a 2 and 3 here because i didn't necessarily actively enjoy this book but only saying "it was ok" also seems harsh especially given that usually even books i DONT like i still give a 3 to. i'm also sorry that this review just happens to be the one i'm rambling about my review patterns in instead of talking about the book, but i guess it really WAS just ok (to me).
ok i caved and gave it a 3
ok i caved and gave it a 3
June 18, 2025
just fine
March 13, 2023
ok so i can explain...
i got a physical copy and had to read it right then and there. that's it i have no other excuse for reading this 3 times in the last month, thanks!
do yourself a favor and read this book.
i got a physical copy and had to read it right then and there. that's it i have no other excuse for reading this 3 times in the last month, thanks!
do yourself a favor and read this book.
October 6, 2016
Another very fine collection of poems from Peter Gizzi, just named a finalist for this year's National Book Award. Maybe because it was the first book of his that I had read cover to cover and, therefore, I found Gizzi's vision and craft all the more stunning, his previous volume, "Threshold Songs," feels like a larger accomplishment to me and a book I feel closer to. Nonetheless, "Archeophonics," captivates me mightily as well, from its searching melancholy to its celebratory wandering. My favorite among these poems is the exquisite "Antico Adagio," but it feels wrong to type it out whole here, so here's a stanza from another verse gem, "Glitter":
Faces fly by
in random litter,
as September rays
hit the lawns.
The high-lit
dry white shafts
slightly vintaging.
The bright
horizon preening
in fife air.
Faces fly by
in random litter,
as September rays
hit the lawns.
The high-lit
dry white shafts
slightly vintaging.
The bright
horizon preening
in fife air.
July 22, 2017
There's an impressive amount of artistry in the creation of these poems...they're so gauzy to read I can only imagine the craftsmanship in the composing, but nothing really resonated with me personally. I could appreciate the poems but felt distanced throughout.
January 26, 2025
Gizzi is SUCH a good poet. this was my least favorite of all of his books (which i have read all of them) though. I just didn’t find it as cohesive from poem to poem but still, it was Gizzi
January 19, 2018
I’m not sure I’ve read a collection of poetry more enamored of the sun in all its variegated glory — and more wonderfully precise in description of all the shades of its character.
From When Orbital Proximity Feels Creepy, we’re in a room with wood floors, thinking on the “strange hunk of metal and rock whizzing around.” From the cosmic we’re drawn back to the immediacy of light on the floor:
The wobble of light on wood-grain late
in the day.
In the loneliness of orange.
In the loveliness of orange.
And like so many late autumn or middle winter days, when the sun never rises enough to provide the expansive possibilities of a midsummer day, we find “I thought the day was opening / but now I see it’s already gone.”
Instead, we’re left with that loneliness/loveliness of orange — the orange of a short day, piquant.
These same concerns are taken up in Release the Darkness to New Lichen:
I need to be standing
in the warmth of the wood
that the sun made.
I need to find myself dissolving.
Gizzi then places us in a forest, where “I saw the frill of light today / walking on the path.” A “frill,” so perfect for the quality of light that falls on us in forests, so easy to see that frill and then move to finding yourself “dissolving” along with the light.
Civil Twilight describes the light as “witchy, / instamatic and shining.” From his porch, where we listen to the plane overhead and notice the day pass, “It all evaporates and decays, / not into silence but into life.” From this I find that it is not merely that the sun is life-giving here, the eternal reference point for all that is not silent, but that light, the gift from the sun, dissolves into life. And we are lucky to be here to witness, to receive, the many gifts that the sunlight bears. From the last stanza:
Take the ride, it won’t take you all the way.
The sun in the street or am I just lucky.
The day was like that.
And the established fact of the sun.
From When Orbital Proximity Feels Creepy, we’re in a room with wood floors, thinking on the “strange hunk of metal and rock whizzing around.” From the cosmic we’re drawn back to the immediacy of light on the floor:
The wobble of light on wood-grain late
in the day.
In the loneliness of orange.
In the loveliness of orange.
And like so many late autumn or middle winter days, when the sun never rises enough to provide the expansive possibilities of a midsummer day, we find “I thought the day was opening / but now I see it’s already gone.”
Instead, we’re left with that loneliness/loveliness of orange — the orange of a short day, piquant.
These same concerns are taken up in Release the Darkness to New Lichen:
I need to be standing
in the warmth of the wood
that the sun made.
I need to find myself dissolving.
Gizzi then places us in a forest, where “I saw the frill of light today / walking on the path.” A “frill,” so perfect for the quality of light that falls on us in forests, so easy to see that frill and then move to finding yourself “dissolving” along with the light.
Civil Twilight describes the light as “witchy, / instamatic and shining.” From his porch, where we listen to the plane overhead and notice the day pass, “It all evaporates and decays, / not into silence but into life.” From this I find that it is not merely that the sun is life-giving here, the eternal reference point for all that is not silent, but that light, the gift from the sun, dissolves into life. And we are lucky to be here to witness, to receive, the many gifts that the sunlight bears. From the last stanza:
Take the ride, it won’t take you all the way.
The sun in the street or am I just lucky.
The day was like that.
And the established fact of the sun.
March 30, 2021
This volume of poems - "airs" a word used throughout in all its meanings - makes it new as its theme and success. It's hard to describe how the poet's relationship to the old language to be the future happens out of light surprising syntactical efforts. Although difficult and maybe spare, there's strong emotion and life but not overtly presented. Very unusual.
July 7, 2021
wondrous wordsmithery! deconstructed a lot of the concepts i had of the limitations of poetry and left me in reverence of the power of enjambment and repetition. can’t wait to re-read, as well as explore more of gizzi’s oeuvre
June 7, 2017
I want color to braid,
to bleed, want song
to fly to flex to think
in lines. To work
the pulp, to open up
this cardinal feeling
in green
to bleed, want song
to fly to flex to think
in lines. To work
the pulp, to open up
this cardinal feeling
in green
July 12, 2019
I do see the use in it, for amid all its talk of "a new language," "the old language," language itself, might be conceptual only, which makes you sympathize with whatever it's being at the nonce.
January 21, 2020
It was a language to eat the sky / a language to say goodbye
April 2, 2020
Economical in language despite high ambitions of broad scenes and feelings captured. Unsentimental but not without deep honesty and heart.
August 16, 2023
fun.
Try as you must.
Break as you will.
Try as you must.
Break as you will.
February 26, 2024
Another one I’ll probably like more on the reread later.
December 14, 2016
Finely written, sparse poems about nature, language, and the world in which we live.
September 1, 2024
... This line announces his project in Archeophonics (“the archeology of lost sound”) of using poetry as a means to know the whir, to converse with the dead....
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November 29, 2016Find it at UCI Libraries: http://antpac.lib.uci.edu:80/record=b...
January 3, 2017
Maybe it was that I just wasn't in the mood for poetry today, but this wasn't my thing. Too jumpy and oblique for me.
February 18, 2020
A reconfiguration of language and its place within archival existence (the documentation of language's past), Archeophonics is my favorite book of poetry by Peter Gizzi.
Read
February 9, 2023The questions that this collection explores are ambitious, driving to the very heart of what language, poetry, and memory are, but it is also a revelatory sonic experience.
December 23, 2017
Beautiful.
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews