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Dream of the Trenches
Literary Nonfiction. Poetry. Fiction. Essay. Part autofiction, part sequential critical engagement, the eponymous essay in DREAM OF THE TRENCHES investigates and builds upon narrative recursion, self-reflexivity and subjective treatments of time in modern and contemporary writing. Winding through the work of Ben Lerner, it also addresses Ashbery, Woolf, Stein, Lessing, Mathews, Knausgaard and others. An accompanying sequence of 20 micro-essays--each of exactly 150 words--explores the possibilities of formal constraint with torqued language ranging across topics from beauty to popular music to the senescence of lobsters.
- GenresPoetry
168 pages, Paperback
First published March 15, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
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June 7, 2019This book is lovely, and it captures the trouble rhythm of thought amazingly well.
If I could see the future would i have had two children, meted
myself into piles of cubes of finger foods, time-outs, and time in solitary with myself on both sides of a two-way mirror? I'm sure I wouldn't not have done it, which is different from saying I'm glad I did it, which isn't not true, but "glad" reminds me of garbage and the zip-top baggies in which I pack Cheerios for the pool.
I can't see the future, but find it just as hard to pin down the conditions of the present. Is it more accurate to say that I pretty much hate the whole business but it's full of lovely moments, or that the whole package is lovely, but made up of dreadful little eternities that gather in the cushions and crunch to dust underfoot? A perfect container makes sense of its contents. If I could swaddle the kids in snug muslin words, I'd tuck them into my elbows and return us to agreed-upon time's perennial false spring.
If I could see the future would i have had two children, meted
myself into piles of cubes of finger foods, time-outs, and time in solitary with myself on both sides of a two-way mirror? I'm sure I wouldn't not have done it, which is different from saying I'm glad I did it, which isn't not true, but "glad" reminds me of garbage and the zip-top baggies in which I pack Cheerios for the pool.
I can't see the future, but find it just as hard to pin down the conditions of the present. Is it more accurate to say that I pretty much hate the whole business but it's full of lovely moments, or that the whole package is lovely, but made up of dreadful little eternities that gather in the cushions and crunch to dust underfoot? A perfect container makes sense of its contents. If I could swaddle the kids in snug muslin words, I'd tuck them into my elbows and return us to agreed-upon time's perennial false spring.
Want to read
June 27, 2019Found here: https://www.powells.com/book/-9781934...
December 31, 2022
Maybe it’s because I had to reread both of them in order get even 50% of what they were talking about, but I can’t help but think of Dream of the Trenches as a post-Postmodern counterpart to William Carlos Williams’s Spring and All. Though Colby isn’t writing a strident manifesto a la Williams, both works place the author in the world in order to view it from a specific vantage point, both are fragmentary, both involve repeating and evolving motifs, and both are ultimately in some way considering the act of writing that is producing them and the body of contemporary literature into which they are being introduced.
Colby, indeed, empowered by her relative (well, and explicit) lack of certainty, ventures even more broadly into areas of psychology, physics, and metaphysics, whilst tying it all back to the act of writing. And where Williams’s repetition is largely confined to ideas, Colby’s work is so steeped in the repetition of not just ideas but specific words that the repetition itself is one of the primary motifs. Certain key words become so embedded in the text that the reader’s associations with them can no longer be separated from said text. Where Williams’s pronouncements and enactments are almost always separate, Colby’s text is simultaneous, acting on ideas even as it is pronouncing them, which in itself is an enactment of the main themes of the text.
It’s real good, is what I’m saying.
***
I wasn't going to bring my book to jury duty because I figured I wouldn't be able to concentrate on anything. At the last minute I decided to instead bring a book I'd already read and could easily fall in and out of, and grabbed Dream of the Trenches pretty much at random. "Fall in and out of" certainly feels apt, not so much like love as like the little divots in the tumble dryer that my neighbors are always leaving their socks in.
On my firs re-read (which, as described above, I sort of count as part of my first read) I wrote various marginalia defining key words that Colby uses throughout the book. On this re-re-read I noticed that some of the definitions I so helpfully provide are written next the second or third appearance of the word in the text. Colby herself does this, defining words well after she's already used them without explanation, though I don't think I was intentionally trying to copy her. I just didn't know which words were worth defining (though the obvious answer was all of them), so I waited until I was sure. Maybe that's why she did it, too.
Jury duty ended up getting out early both days, and for the next week or so I gave preference to the book I had thought I'd be too anxious to read (Tim Clare's Coward, which might be ironic but I think is just incredibly on the nose [in regards to my own situation, not his choice of title, which is perfectly appropriate]), but picked up Dream of the Trenches again on Christmas thinking I might as well get it in under the wire.
Despite being a pretty regular re-reader, it was only now, as I was flipping through to find where I'd left off, that it struck me that my brain was having to distinguish between my memory of reading these pages a week and a half ago and my memory of reading them (and then immediately re-reading them) 3 years ago. At first it did a pretty good job, but with each section I had to re-re-re-read more of it before I realized I'd already re-re-read it, the new reading experience bringing all the previous ones into line like an eclipse.
Of course, I'm worried that all of this comes off as affect, but it really is just that reading Dream of the Trenches always rewires my brain, and it's impossible not to write after it afterwards. Between this and Robert Haas I've completely upended (or at least tried to upend) the way I write poetry, I think for the better.
(Obviously there is a contradiction between having certain criteria for my selection and "grabbed pretty much at random." I guess "pretty much" is doing the heavy lifting to resolve that contradiction, I couldn't think of a less awkward way of defining that grey area between chance and choice.)
Colby, indeed, empowered by her relative (well, and explicit) lack of certainty, ventures even more broadly into areas of psychology, physics, and metaphysics, whilst tying it all back to the act of writing. And where Williams’s repetition is largely confined to ideas, Colby’s work is so steeped in the repetition of not just ideas but specific words that the repetition itself is one of the primary motifs. Certain key words become so embedded in the text that the reader’s associations with them can no longer be separated from said text. Where Williams’s pronouncements and enactments are almost always separate, Colby’s text is simultaneous, acting on ideas even as it is pronouncing them, which in itself is an enactment of the main themes of the text.
It’s real good, is what I’m saying.
***
I wasn't going to bring my book to jury duty because I figured I wouldn't be able to concentrate on anything. At the last minute I decided to instead bring a book I'd already read and could easily fall in and out of, and grabbed Dream of the Trenches pretty much at random. "Fall in and out of" certainly feels apt, not so much like love as like the little divots in the tumble dryer that my neighbors are always leaving their socks in.
On my firs re-read (which, as described above, I sort of count as part of my first read) I wrote various marginalia defining key words that Colby uses throughout the book. On this re-re-read I noticed that some of the definitions I so helpfully provide are written next the second or third appearance of the word in the text. Colby herself does this, defining words well after she's already used them without explanation, though I don't think I was intentionally trying to copy her. I just didn't know which words were worth defining (though the obvious answer was all of them), so I waited until I was sure. Maybe that's why she did it, too.
Jury duty ended up getting out early both days, and for the next week or so I gave preference to the book I had thought I'd be too anxious to read (Tim Clare's Coward, which might be ironic but I think is just incredibly on the nose [in regards to my own situation, not his choice of title, which is perfectly appropriate]), but picked up Dream of the Trenches again on Christmas thinking I might as well get it in under the wire.
Despite being a pretty regular re-reader, it was only now, as I was flipping through to find where I'd left off, that it struck me that my brain was having to distinguish between my memory of reading these pages a week and a half ago and my memory of reading them (and then immediately re-reading them) 3 years ago. At first it did a pretty good job, but with each section I had to re-re-re-read more of it before I realized I'd already re-re-read it, the new reading experience bringing all the previous ones into line like an eclipse.
Of course, I'm worried that all of this comes off as affect, but it really is just that reading Dream of the Trenches always rewires my brain, and it's impossible not to write after it afterwards. Between this and Robert Haas I've completely upended (or at least tried to upend) the way I write poetry, I think for the better.
(Obviously there is a contradiction between having certain criteria for my selection and "grabbed pretty much at random." I guess "pretty much" is doing the heavy lifting to resolve that contradiction, I couldn't think of a less awkward way of defining that grey area between chance and choice.)
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews