Awe

by Mac Wellman

Poetry. AWE is the tale of the three dead letters of the English language: Thorn, Eth, and AE (pronounced ----). The teller of these stories, for there are more than one, is an old cat (O/C) with the sad excuse of a story tale, er, tail; and a mess of other possible tails and worlds (that is), a mess of If(f)s; both blissful and broken by the sheer, immense particularity of it all; and so he glows in the dark. A wise cat among wonders. A cat who challenges all tails but his own...

88 pages, Paperback

Published April 1, 2019

Reviews

[Cassie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think this piece tried to do a few things, but none of them were successful to me. As a folkloric tale told by a cat, there was no narrative pull to speak of. As an exploration of dead letters in English (what drew me in as someone with a background in linguistics), the letters themselves were seemed to be used for their sounds without evidence of deeper exploration. Finally, as a poem itself, there were some fun bits to say out loud but I kept questioning if I was physically reading the poem correctly (I was reading down each column, left column first, a page at a time). Overall, I wasn't sure how to read this, so much of the poem came off as gibberish.

[Cooper Renner · Rating 1 out of 5]

I cannot make myself read this through. The blurb “James Joyce reborn as a rap artist” should’ve warned me away! Nonsense in that hands of Carroll and Lear is great. “Not sense”—but words almost as physical objects—in the hands of Susan Howe can be great. But this is, to me, just garble: repeated senseless words, syntax-less, little spurts of image on occasion. “Performance” (“rap,” maybe?) in a really tedious way, like a slightly less absurd version of Schwitters’ Ur-Sonata.

[John Madera · Rating 5 out of 5]

Foregrounding language as disruption, irruption, eruption, interruption, bringing to mind P. Inman's profound textual, that is, syllabic and phonemic play, Mac Wellman's book-length textual, textural scatteration Awe delights, yes, but also revivifies the archaic meaning of "awe" as terror and dread.