Test Piece

by Sheryda Warrener

Ways of Seeing meets Mary Ruefle in these visual-art-inflected poems

Though they started from Sheryda Warrener's impulse to see herself more clearly, the poems in Test Piece ended up becoming more expansive meditations on seeing and vision. They engage with the process and practice of art-making, and specifically with abstract minimalist works like those by Eva Hesse, Anne Truitt, Ruth Asawa, and Agnes Martin.

Not-seeing/not-knowing is a motif, as is weave, grid, pattern, rhythm of interiors, domestic life. These poems are informed by collage, by the act of bringing images and lines together. With their echoes and reverberations (hand, mirror, body, clear, form, face), a greater complexity is revealed.

"In conversation with visual art, mirrors, and the traces of self we assemble through encounter, Sheryda Warrener's Test Piece holds an expansive place to dwell with the phenomenological. Interacting with event and object, reflection and parataxis, the writing asks us to consider contingent spaces and the matter of matter and meaning making. The poems adhere as arrangement, as a consideration of relationality. 'What does she whimper in the dog's ear? / How earthly we behave, believing we're alone.'" - Hoa Nguyen, author of A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure


"Sheryda Warrener's newest poetry collection unspools as a complex weave of repeated motifs, ritualistic gestures, and deeply embodied observations. I'm especially struck by the influence of twentieth-century women artists within the collection: meditations on Eva Hesse, Agnes Martin, and Sherrie Levine's works structure much of Test Piece. Palimpsests of photographed interiors, where living and writing collide lyrically and randomly, combine with floating textual cut-ups of variegating transparency. This concretizes, perhaps, how the poems bloom forth from experimental assemblage: 'her body holds/the long blue sentence of it...'" - Marina Roy, artist and author of Queuejumping

Genres: Poetry, Canada

80 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 13, 2022

Reviews

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love reading indie books so I was very excited to read TEST PIECE by Sheryda Warrener. It was recommended to me when I visited Coach House Books since I love poetry too and it was great! I really enjoyed all the poems. I loved the combination of poetry and visual art. I enjoyed the repeating structure of poem then Interior Portrait. The Interior Portraits then reflect on the poetry since they all include text that describe textures that adds yet another layer to these multilayered images. My fave poem is the opening poem Crushed Velvet which links directly to the following Interior Portrait. I liked how this poem plays with time and the feminine.

Thank you to Coach House Books for my gifted review copy!

[Rhea Tregebov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Warrener's third book continues to expand the range and depth of her writing and her formal experimentation. The poems examine the boundaries of the self within an examination of the creative process of female visual artists. Beyond the pleasure of Warrener's always supple, exquisite language is the pleasure of being introducing to such artists as Eva Hesse, Anne Truitt, Ruth Asawa, and Agnes Martin. Warrener's own collages included in the book are lovely, though the reproductions are rather hard to read. When I was able to view the collages at Warrener's launch in Vancouver, the images were much clearer. I don't see any images available online, and she doesn't seem to have her own website. But this is a minor quibble. Astonishing book.

[Dora Prieto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sheryda has such a breadth that she brings to the pages — this book gives so much on process and life while being unsparing with the lyric moments.
"What does she whimper in the dog’s ear? / How earthly we behave, believing we’re alone."
"her body holds/the long blue sentence of it…"
— what?!! wow.

[Icarus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even knowing my feelings towards her poetry may be (deeply) biased after adoring having her as a poetry professor years ago, I absolutely love these poems. My heart leaned out of the window of my chest reading them, never having even noticed the window before.

[⏺ · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very short book of ekphrastic poems. They make more sense knowing something about the artworks, I enjoyed the title poem best, after Eva Hesse, an interesting superimposition of the materic experimentation of the artist and the "matter of the Self" in the poem.

[Margaryta · Rating 4 out of 5]

REVIEW FORTHCOMING

[August Bourré · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 – lots of interesting things happening, but it seemed to transition in and out of narrative modes in a way that ultimately made some of the pieces feel a bit shapeless.