Comma

by Jennifer Still

Winner of the 2018 Lansdowne Prize for Poetry

It was a long silence that brought me to the erasure poem. Not mine, but my brother's, during his many months in a coma. I came across a notebook of his--a pocket-sized, handwritten field guide of prairie grasses. I read it for companionship, signs of consciousness, attention. I read it for the rhythms of his still and distant hand.... I was reading a taxonomy of silique drifted into soliloquy.

Comma is a poetry infused with pause and quaver, inspired by Jennifer Still's collaboration with her ailing brother's hand-written field guide to prairie grasses. Trusting the instability of words, she attends to torn paper, shadings, erasures, and intervals, venturing inside the chrysalis, the breathing tube, and the brittle lexicon of botany to achieve a lyrical foliation of grief. From coma to comma, the held breath sprouts, and hums.

Praise for Comma

Comma is a living, breathing field guide to the unconscious--Still's poems flicker and leap from the page. This collection is an immersive, tactile wonder, a compassionate, steadfast a truly remarkable exploration by a truly remarkable artist. --Christine Fellows, singer/songwriter/poet and author of Burning Daylight

Genres: Poetry

160 pages, Paperback

Published June 6, 2017

Reviews

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gobstopper

In the small mirror where my red face floats
I can still see it, the egg on the sidewalk that makes me
look up to the hole in the throat. Behind every word
there's a socket in the night where our dove flew out.
What is private? In the rearview where all our red faces
float. Here, between colours, we have been stopped
for such a long time. All the engines are cooing
while she is being hit from the inside. Her pale arms
chop. I can see right through to the tiny Everlasting
How long will we be stuck here between
There's nowhere to go and I'm dying?



*

[Danie Botha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poems made by hand

Jennifer Still’s collection of erasure poems, Comma, is a unique celebration of the human condition in extremis. Her poems, Jennifer says, were made, not written. In minimalistic fashion, she bares the vulnerability, the helplessness, and hopelessness of man in the abyss of unconsciousness, but also in a deft manner shows how resilience, how love and courage are all woven together. “What is brave?” The reader is compelled, time and time again, to pause and reflect, then read on. When stripped from the certainty of life, the most elementary and simple things start to matter: a single breath, the blink of an eye, the twitch of a hand muscle, the discoveries made in deciphering notes scribbled across a pencil drawing of prairie grass.

[Lynn Tait · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was not sure if I'd like this book, though I am a fan of erasure poems and have written the odd one myself. Some I did find a little disjointed for my personal taste. the 1st section of illustrated erasures (but only that 1st section) did nothing for me; the rest of the illustrations and erasures I found rewarding. There was a section with what seems to be aphorisms, quotes and discussions on the point of what she was trying to accomplish that I found for me - made it feel like I was getting to know Still as a person and poet. Did not have any sense of pretentiousness in her ideas or explanations. Had to warm up to this book but it ended up providing plenty of heat, and captured my heart.