readiness/enough/depends/on

by Larry Eigner, Robert Grenier (Editor)

A few months before the death of the noted American poet Larry Eigner in February 1996, Green Integer editor Douglas Messerli contracted with him to publish a new collection of his work. Now, edited by Eigner's long-time friend Robert Grenier, this new book has been long awaited by the growing readership of Eigner's poetry. It is a work that gracefully accepts death and, by virture of its very testament to the life around, reiterates Eigner's continual engagement with the world—despite a lifetime spent in a wheel chair.

Larry Eigner was the author of over 40 books of poetry and critical writing. Among his books are windows / walls / yard / way, The World and Its Streets , and Things Stirring Together or Far Apart.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1998

Reviews

[Eddie Watkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

The layout of Eigner's poetry on the page cannot be replicated here. He wrote/composed at the typewriter, hunting and pecking, often allowing the words to step down and across the page, sometimes double-spaced, sometimes single-spaced, often with spaces between words or phrases in the individual lines. The effect is one of not only an embodiment on the page of the process of writing, but of a visual composition that throws into emphasized relief the words used, allowing for a verbal minimalism that manages to draw the external natural world (his usual subject matter) into the page itself, making a tiny poem seem large. He is one of those poets whose use of a single word is distinctive - his simple typing of the word 'cloud' is like no one else's - something that does not seem possible, but then I've heard said that Thelonious Monk could invest a single note with rhythm. A similar phenomenon is at play in Eigner's poems.

This morning I read the following poem and it made me feel really good, like a kid with a whole open world before me.

the beauty of

trees and sky

hopscotch

by the front steps

the square miles


I suppose its effect is due mainly to cleverness, but I don't mind. The 'square miles' at first puzzled me but then I (of course!) put it together with the hopscotch squares drawn on the sidewalk (a world of play in itself), and then I put it together with the trees and sky (square miles of actual landscape - a world to see and discover), which then made the whole world a world of play and discovery, and I swear to god I became for a moment the kid I once was (the kid I still am somewhere).

Here's another that gave me a similar feeling, but more in just the realm of perception, not necessarily the realm of full experience.

footwork

skateboard

middle of the street

between trees

sunlight

I saw flashing before my mind's eye a quick film of a skateboard passing before me down a street, which I think is remarkable given the extreme economy of means. I think what helps achieve this effect is putting 'sunlight' after 'between trees' so that when reading trees are planted in the mind and a split second later sunlight flashes between them creating a flicker effect that causes visual movement in the mind. Maybe...

On a grosser note I came across two poems that referenced shit, or the act of shitting. The following poem I found rather repulsive, but again kudos to Eigner for creating that response with so few words.

"waste"?

one big long crescent sausage

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just open a book, any book - by Larry Eigner - sorting, with finger pointing to some place on a page - You will find something. For your mind & heart.

- from the Afterward by Robert Grenier

The words of Robert Grenier (Eigner's friend and editor) ring true. Anyone reading a book of Eigner's poetry with an open mind is sure to find something. Unless what the reader is looking for is a long poem. Eigner's poems are remarkably short and stark, ranging from five words to two pages in length...

hills

 earth
sky

 night
clouds
 - September 24 78

Some may be annoyed by the simplicity of a poem like this. Who is this Eigner and how does he get away with arranging five words on a page and calling it a poem? It's not even a five word sentence, but five loosely related words listed with punctuation or conjunction. I can understand why some may be annoyed. There's a level of pretension (or, perceived pretension) in a poem like this. But overlooking the pretension, I find poems like this to be refreshing.

More than refreshing, what makes this poem interesting to me, in the context of this book, is that it appears to branch into four of the poems that follow...

sun
 grass, tree rows
 off

 hills

 mute
steady motion

 clouds shifting
light change

 spaces

 plenty of time
in the room seeing

 rain

slant the

 open air

heat fixed in
paving the sun

 spreads to again
 - March 12-21 80

* * *

 h e r e

the sky

 changes
shut the eyes

 leaves
in motion around
 - November 78

* * *

a dark night
wind and rain bow

 the bush out the window
how
 lights may burn

 steady
 - March 26 79

* * *

a winding road

 red hydrant

 trees in the wind
clouds hidden some

 endless
 - November 12 78

[Camille Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

“how many years / without death”: Larry Eigner’s memento mori