iEpiphany

by Amy Catanzano

Poetry. Amy Catanzano's iEPIPHANY proposes a theory of quantum poetics through "a futuristic lyric that implodes upon impact"--Laura Moriarty. "For Catanzano, the temporality of the lyric takes a turn; the poems in this book have become lyrics of temporality. The iEpiphanies that follow are nothing less than glimpses of light moving through light and time, intertwined"--Lyn Hejinian.

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Amy Catanzano is the author of three books. Her cross-genre novella combining poetry with fiction, Starlight in Two Million: A Neo-Scientific Novella (Noemi Press, 2014), received the Noemi Press Book Award for Fiction. Multiversal (Fordham University Press, 2009) received the PEN USA Literary Award in Poetry and was selected by Michael Palmer for publication as the recipient of Fordham University's Poets Out Loud Prize. iEpiphany was published by Anne Waldman’s independent publishing venture, Erudite Fangs Editions, in 2009. She is also the author of an electronic-chapbook, the heartbeat is a fractal (Ahadada Books, 2009). Her poetry, fiction, and cross-genre writing has appeared in literary journals such as Aufgabe, Colorado Review, Conjunctions, Denver Quarterly, Fence Magazine,and New American Writing. Recent speculative essays on the intersections of literature, art, and science appear in Jacket2 and Poems and Poetics. Catanzano is an Assistant Professor of English, the Poet-in-Residence, and the Director of the Creative Writing Program at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. Prior to teaching at Wake Forest, Catanzano taught at Naropa University in the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, co-founded by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman. She holds a Master of Fine Arts degree with an emphasis in poetry writing from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Selected Links:
Jacket2: The Imaginary Present
Quantum Poetics at Poems and Poetics
Jacket2: Poetry & Science
I09: Best Books of Poetry for Every Kind of Science Fiction Fan
Action Yes
Tarpaulin Sky Journal
La Petite Zine
Web Conjunctions

Reviews

[Tentatively, Convenience]

Amy Catanzano is one of my GoodReads friends. I'm happy that this is the case. I'll usually only agree to befriending someone on GR if they seem to be sincerely interested in reading &, if they've approached me for the befriending, if their motives don't seem to be purely self-promotional. Then, if they're writers & their work seems interesting to me, I propose trading bks or whatnot. That's the case here. THEN, I must read them & review them HONESTLY - from the heart or the gut or wherever my 'best' qualities metaphorically (or not) reside.

As I TRY to write this review, I find myself circling around the actual CONTENT of it in favor of all sorts of things attached to it, surrounding it. I do hope to circle in eventually.

1st, there're Amy's reviews of other bks (here on GR, ie). She's gotten me very interested in Laura Moriarity. & she's one of the 5 or so reviewers whose reviews I've taken a strong interest in here - EXCEPT FOR her giving of every bk reviewed a 5 star rating. NOW, for those of you who've read my review of Alan Davies' "Mnemonotechnics" you know that Alan & I both have recently critiqued this 5-stars-in-every-review - esp when there's not actually a REVIEW accompanying it! But Amy actually DOES review & she seems to only review things she DOES love - so I doubt that she'd be writing a review of some hack bk on The Bermuda Triangle (or some such) & giving it 5 stars. HOWEVER, she may know many of these authors personally (or hope to) & may want to be friends w/ them - & might, therefore, be unwilling to take the risk of offending them &/OR may just be a very POSITIVE person - I suspect this latter is very true indeed.

SO, this brings me to the 2nd layer of my circling in: the 2 poetry bks of hers that she sent me (this & "Multiversal") have personalized inscriptions. Now, I've often eschewed signing bks - it's particularly rare that I sign them - but that's for reasons that I no longer ascribe to (scribe to?). I have to admit that the bks that I have from friends that're signed are, indeed, precious to me (even though this very 'preciousness' was part of my afore-mentioned eschewal). The inscription here is:

"for
tENTATIVELY,
a cONVENIENCE
pg.13
"WE SAy RADio
BUT MEAN RADiCAL."

WITH THANKS AND ADMIRATION,
Amy Catanzano
2010"

& she drew 3 stars around the bk's title.

The quote from her poem on page 13 is actually relevant to a series of CDs that I've published of RATical RATio. I deduce Amy knows about these (despite their extreme obscurity) OR IS THIS A PHENOMENAL COINCIDENCE?! How can I not be touched by that? I'd like to think that this lovely & touching inscription alone wd be enuf reason for most reviewers to 'wax poetic' about the brilliance of this bk - & to, of course, rate it w/ 5 stars (or 3 - in honor of the drawing part of her inscription). HOWEVER, I intend to do no such thing here. There'll be no rating & the review won't gush. Giving anything but my best shot at a serious review here wd be shallow.

Circling, circling: the bk is small, it's published by Anne Waldman's Erudite Fangs press. Anne Waldman is no slouch & that right there perks my interest. But here's where my 1st criticism comes in - the physical bk has no TRUE INDIVIDUALISM. It has no personalized touches in its actual manufacture, it's not an ARTISTS BK. That's not so bad in & of itself but I admit that what often truly sucks me into an object is when it REEKS OF INDIVIDUALITY & CREATIVITY AT EVERY LEVEL - Steve McCaffery's incredible "CARNIVAL - the first panel: 1967-70" on Coach House Press (1973) can be taken apart & pieced together into one large glorious sheet of virtuosic typing; Lawrence Upton's 'THE TRE MOR" is rubber-stamped w/ 2 different inks on a paper towel. But, sometimes, the interesting external aspects often encase writing that I don't find nearly as interesting.

Perhaps "iEpiphany"'s been printed by a print-on-demand press, perhaps the publisher gets reduced publisher printing rates if they print 5 bks a yr. That makes it practical to print small poetry bks w/o any expensive or demanding characteristics. That's all well & good. I'm just as grateful, if not more so, as the next writer that these print-on-demand businesses exist. Their downside, however, is that all the clevernesses that many of us explore(d) pre-print-on-demand, partially b/c just finding a way to even DO IT was often difficult, are made too easily gone. Small presses have been 'mainstreamized'. Gone are pouring multiple inks into the Gestetner ink drum, gone are the using some surplus bulk material as the cover. It's all standardized.

On the PLUS side, in the back of the bk there's an explanation re the "green press INITIATIVE" that explains how the printing of the bk uses fewer trees, pollutes less water, etc.. It's thanks to the greater efficient organization & eco-socio-friendliness of such printers that I feel like there really IS some improvement here. But I'm still circling..

On the back of the bk there're 2 reviews of it by Lyn Hejinian & Laura Moriarity. Both reviews are GLOWING - after all they're back-cover promo. & these reviews interest me - will I get as much out of reading this as these 2 writers did? One can only hope so!!

Hejinian writes:

"The iEpiphanies that follow are nothing less than glimpses of light moving through time: light and time, intertwined."

Whew! & Moriarity writes:

"iEpiphany proposes a futuristic lyric that implodes upon impact. These poems are infinitely complex and yet completely clear - and they know what they want."

These reviewers LOVED this bk. I wonder if they've also communicated w/ Catanzano about it & gotten input from her as to her feelings & intentions. Whatever the case, I feel 'compelled' to question: Isn't everything "infinitely complex" &, if not, is any human product likely to be so? As for "completely clear"? Not to me, nope, not to me. But, then, my mind glazes over when I read poetry & technical manuals.

One of my entry points into Catanzano's work is my 'knowledge' (highly limited though it is) that Amy has an interest in such things as mathematics, science, pataphysics, & the Church of the SubGenius. As such, I expect the writing to be informed w/ such a sensibility. & I do find traces of a similar incisiveness here to that of Christopher Dewdney - whose writing I've taken an interest in from time to time & who also poetically reforms science. Perhaps it's the malformed scientist in me that asked the questions in the preceding paragraph. If such astounding claims are to be made, I'd like to see them 'proved' - by wch I mean substantiated. &, perhaps, Moriarity cd do it - I have no reason to believe otherwise &, after all, the review on the back is limited by space - it's promotional - not an essay. &, again perhaps, there's the contents of the bk itself in wch I can look for substantiation.

So what do I find inside? Some fairly meticulously written work, very neat, no mistakes that I found (Maybe this press even PROOFREADS?! That wd be practically miraculous in this day & age of small presses. Maybe Amy is really that careful.).

Hejinian & Moriarity both use the word "lyric" in their reviews & when I think of "lyric" I think of singing so I read this & imagine them sung. I don't mean as sound poetry, I mean using melodies that one might remember. &, yes, in some cases, I can see it (or hear it or imagine it) & in others not. But, no, I don't personally think of this as "lyric poetry". To me, it's more pared-down discursiveness - w/ an occasional repetitiveness of imagery that smacks of particular vocabulary.

There're feathers & birds & birds-eye views & building inside one's self:


p 16:

"Like the city inside yourself, golden, ruminative, you
build a planet for your binding."

p. 20:

"Like lightning
the heroes inside us
build lunar
colonies."

&, then , in "periodic." she writes:

"This is more like the science fiction of genre than the
genre of science fiction."

&, that, for me, whether intended this way or not, is a very elegant way of summarizing this bk. It cd be a summary of any poetry that uses scientific reference w/o being straight-forward expository:

"Between networks and the old systems theory
Interpretations
And always the non-lucid geometry of nature"

&, that, too, for me, is a description of this bk. It strikes me that Amy tries to LOCATE something in her poetry:

p 49: "soothsaying" w/o the proper justification:

"yet geographically,
most flashes are experienced
above ground.
There are flashes and flashes that displace us.
Many formations of the flashes
are out of print.
Air is the spin of crystalline
quartz
scrolling symmetrically down the
page"

This poetry isn't concrete, it's full of simile & metaphor. Is it in that sense that it's "lyric"? & the similes & metaphors seem to conflate the (often dubious) rigor of science w/ the psychic sensitivity & fine-tuned openness of poetry & creative acts in general. Amy is a fine-tuned being, more finely tuned than any mechanism of measure - so her measurements inscribe the edges of life-in-motion w/o pinning it down to death.

[Gina · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

I felt dumb at times, but then focused on the language and found a comfortable orientation in the words and world of the words.

"mosaics."
"true."
"poetry."
"persistence."
"flatland."

^Some favorites.