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Body Language
Poetry. BODY LANGUAGE, a collection of prose poetry unique both in content and design, is actually two books--"Primer" and "Body"--bound "tete-beche" (sometimes called a "flip book," as it has two front covers). Together the books form a diptych investigating the body in language and language in the body-"a provocative, loopic continuum," says Lisa Russ Spaar, "in which prose poems "defining" body parts (The Spleen, The Pituitary Gland, The Pimple, The Thumb) mesh with an abecedarium/cipher concerning topics as various as fate, reality, and phenomenology. With its trope of clue-like instruction and unique, flip-book embodiment, BODY LANGUAGE creates a kind of hybrid detective f(r)iction, an intrepid mash-up of high and low cultures in which the reader is as likely to encounter Rilke and Proto-Sinaitic inscription as Lacan, Film Noir, The Three Stooges, cell phones, higher mathematics, binary thought, and Coyote and Road Runner cartoons."
- GenresPoetry
118 pages
First published November 15, 2008
1 person is currently reading
54 people want to read
About the author
Mark Cunningham
56 books4 followersA devoted Horslips fan since his early teens, Mark Cunningham first interviewed the band in 1995, for Hot Press magazine. Later, he created the souvenir brochures for the band’s reunion tours, and produced videos for their general promotion.
Mark’s early career was focused on work as a bass guitarist, composer and producer. He produced the first official BBC Children In Need charity single, and played a supporting role with several well-known artists.
Moving into music journalism in the early ’nineties, Mark contributed to a wide range of magazines, as well as writing two popular reference books – Good Vibrations: A History Of Record Production and Live & Kicking: The Rock Concert Industry In The Nineties.
In 1998, Mark co-founded TPi (Total Production International) – a monthly magazine for the live industry – and its associated annual TPi Awards event.
Since leaving TPi in 2011, he has worked in a marketing role for leading live sound company Clair Global, as well as advising on numerous entertainment production initiatives worldwide.
Mark lives in Southend-on-Sea, in the south-east of England.
For further information on Mark’s career activities, please visit
Mark’s early career was focused on work as a bass guitarist, composer and producer. He produced the first official BBC Children In Need charity single, and played a supporting role with several well-known artists.
Moving into music journalism in the early ’nineties, Mark contributed to a wide range of magazines, as well as writing two popular reference books – Good Vibrations: A History Of Record Production and Live & Kicking: The Rock Concert Industry In The Nineties.
In 1998, Mark co-founded TPi (Total Production International) – a monthly magazine for the live industry – and its associated annual TPi Awards event.
Since leaving TPi in 2011, he has worked in a marketing role for leading live sound company Clair Global, as well as advising on numerous entertainment production initiatives worldwide.
Mark lives in Southend-on-Sea, in the south-east of England.
For further information on Mark’s career activities, please visit
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 8, 2009
Body Language is a two-part book printed so that it can be read starting from either cover. In one direction, read “Primer,” and in the other direction, “Body.” Each “book” is 59 pages in length and includes its own Table of Contents, Author Bio, and Acknowledgments section. The two books meet in the middle with mirror images of “Tarpaulin Sky Press: Current & Forthcoming Titles.”
“Body” is a series of poems based on human anatomy and things associated with the body, such as “The Bruise” and “The Fart.” “Primer” is a series of poems based on the letters of the alphabet, numbers and mathematical concepts, such as “O as Placeholder” and “Increases without Bound.” (Titles carry weight here.)These poems are amusing (“Lying down you are infinite. Or at least longer.”), often aphoristic (“The one over twelve is either the hero or the one who will die”), and occasionally poignant (“You learned the loneliness of calling those who no longer knew what you’re doing without asking”). Since my math education was limited to high school algebra and geometry along time ago, while reading the “Primer” poems, I learn things, for example, “every prime over three, though sealed in itself, is a form of 6n plus or minus 1.” (Primer indeed!) Although overall I find the poems included in “Body” less engaging than those of “Primer,” intriguing moments do surface throughout, such as, “if you have to show just a few teeth, life is decent. Have to bare a few more, not so decent. If all of them end up exposed? Someone else will have to piece together the bald facts,” from“The Skull” and “the dead seated, elbows wrapped around knees, patient, hugged in, ready no matter what’s waiting on the other side, heaven, hell, or archeologists” from“Ball-and-Socket Joints.” However much they delve into or act out “signs,” Cunningham’s Body Language poems are ultimately not so much informed by linguistics as by sheer giddy humanness. Mathematics? anatomy? perhaps they’re all the same thing.
“Body” is a series of poems based on human anatomy and things associated with the body, such as “The Bruise” and “The Fart.” “Primer” is a series of poems based on the letters of the alphabet, numbers and mathematical concepts, such as “O as Placeholder” and “Increases without Bound.” (Titles carry weight here.)These poems are amusing (“Lying down you are infinite. Or at least longer.”), often aphoristic (“The one over twelve is either the hero or the one who will die”), and occasionally poignant (“You learned the loneliness of calling those who no longer knew what you’re doing without asking”). Since my math education was limited to high school algebra and geometry along time ago, while reading the “Primer” poems, I learn things, for example, “every prime over three, though sealed in itself, is a form of 6n plus or minus 1.” (Primer indeed!) Although overall I find the poems included in “Body” less engaging than those of “Primer,” intriguing moments do surface throughout, such as, “if you have to show just a few teeth, life is decent. Have to bare a few more, not so decent. If all of them end up exposed? Someone else will have to piece together the bald facts,” from“The Skull” and “the dead seated, elbows wrapped around knees, patient, hugged in, ready no matter what’s waiting on the other side, heaven, hell, or archeologists” from“Ball-and-Socket Joints.” However much they delve into or act out “signs,” Cunningham’s Body Language poems are ultimately not so much informed by linguistics as by sheer giddy humanness. Mathematics? anatomy? perhaps they’re all the same thing.
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March 3, 2013nice
May 24, 2014
very interest
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews