herso

by Susana Gardner

herso is a limited edition chapbook by Susana Gardner. Complex, layered lyrics in a large photographic folder evoke both the archival nature of Gardner's poetry and the unbound sea thematically resonating in herso. Typeset by Susana Gardner; designed, published and distributed by Nicole Mauro and The University of Theory and Memorabilia press for year 3 of the Dusie chapbook Kollektiv.

Genres: Poetry

38 pages, Paper and Photographic Cardboard

First published March 28, 2009

Reviews

[Grady · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Written Word as Visual Art

herso

Susana Gardner has created a poetic work in herso
that steps beyond being fine poetry and successfully
becomes something entirely different. The presentation of this
work feels as important as the poetry within: a matte black
folder, secured with a maroon grosgrain ribbon is subtly titled
on the back of the folder above a wax stamp imprint of the
Dusie Press that produced the work. Opening the folder
creates the feeling of entering a private quasi-locked world:
perhaps we as readers are invading personal property not
meant for our eyes. But once within the folder, a sheath of
manila sheets, unbound like notes awaiting the final decision
of assemblage, invite the reader to explore the elegance of
Gardner’s writing.

The title pages suggest the word games or idea
moldings that will follow: ‘an heirship in waves’ and ‘utter’ at
first bring smiles of wordplay and later, on the many repeated
reading this work requires, the meanings are clearly evident.
Susana Gardner has an obvious affinity for the sea, as though
the ocean is part of the pulsation of her own being:

‘it is always the same coastline –
with its unsteady
grayed forecast – coastline
carried and kept
changeless as the
sea is forward and
same – thus
descending as the
sea must seemingly descend
as in its coastal carriage –
each wave wearily catching and
crashing into the next –
a hatching – a harmony or honing
(if you will) of this we this coast
this I – long abandoned - a nest
or home ever as even as it is just –
only ever built in anticipation of
its eventual unraveling of each
moment in its remaking – a simple moment
a cunning moment thus defined
as the road is steep this road is blind
and never ending of sea same
sea sane sea erratic’

In her placement of words, kaleidoscopic
manipulations of phrases and repeated thoughts Gardner,
somewhat reluctantly it feels, invites us into her world, a world
as aqueous and changing yet eternally rhythmically secure as
the waves that crash and at times caress the shore of her
meditation. Reading herso is intoxicating, seducing the reader
into the siren call of the sea Gardner so passionately loves.

As if this experience weren’t sufficient the final pages
of this artful portfolio (subtitled ‘irrational lithographies’) are
artworks created from words with varying fonts, inkings, and
designed placements – each worthy of framing individually –
but serving here as an apt closure to this fascinating poet’s
journey. This is a ‘publication’ of importance and one that
serves to introduce a fresh and wholly appropriate way of
offering poetry.

Grady Harp

[Marthe Reed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Herso by Susana Gardner

A Dusie chapbook from Nicole Mauro’s University of Theory and Memorabilia Press


A singular beauty, this chapbook: black portfolio opening right to left, held closed by a single wide band of maroon gros-grain ribbon, the title page stamped in rose wax with Dusie’s D, the chap's loose pages of cream bond like a sheaf of music waiting the bow.

Gardner’s lines both break and hold together, suspended by dashes, breath, the fact of pausing, creating a collection “built in anticipation of / its eventual unraveling of each / moment”. An embrace of openness, the poems articulate a series of moments, moments akin to the images of sea and waves that structure the opening section and serve as a motif throughout. The words and lines move like wavelets upon the shore, insistent, multiple, unceasing:

this she she never knew or was
but founded anew – toward the
page (the sea-lit heart) rises
receding and so forward slowly
ever-still as language must and

Meditations in which each understanding washes over the others, breaking upon, opening, closing over those that precede, like the pressure of waves stuttering across one another in the sprawling rhythms of the shore-break’s aftermath. “urgency – so toward – so untold – not / which came but that which came as / now as real and new – what hard fast” Hard for what? “this new I,/ small herso.” A birth, a bird, a page, a word. Of the sea. “her”. herso –

In the second section, “herso – an heirship in waves”, the punning, word play, sound play of the text swings into a higher gear:

one one one
only in (inheritance)

one one one
(small hero gathering)

One one one
(herso repeat, look up)

Words tumble, fall, crash into, change one another, become other, taking flight and voice:

Her Her Her,

Her(o)ine.

Das
inn inn

in a Swift

sharp, polyvocalic
she she in sweeps

In the final secion, “Sheerer Lightships of Girlish Rigors, Heirship of Mostly Girthish Sighs”, the linguistic tumble becomes visual, “irrational lithographies” whose language concretizes itself, becoming word-tumble/cascade/shout. Each page itself a voice, cresting out of the still or tossing surface of the page’s ‘gray sea’ of language, text writing on/over/against itself, making itself seen /sound:

TrespassSingletreePassionate

Antiheroes

TailspinsFaltering

To leave us still – at the end of motion or wind’s pressure, “unrepentant, still”.

Bravura performance, Susana, Nicole!

[Care · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fiercely, adamantly, feminist. Rousing stuff here. Highly recommended for creative souls who crave time on the ocean. Be prepared for confrontation and word play.

[Kathrin Schaeppi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tied with a wine ribbon, stamped with a wax seal, in a black folder lies Herso unbound, unnumbered, on water-marked vanillin sheets. Herso: an heirship in waves.

Here the visual, oratory and conceptual experiences balance. Poems are exquisitely presented on the page, the mouth is awash with rhythmic chorals and the mind enchanted with images.

" 'eh eh eh' — tiny bird — provok-
ing — rara avis — established the need
to memorize this moment — her face..."

***

"by the sea on...
nested sea on...
nets her sea on...
nests the sea on...
by sea on..."

***

“descending as the
sea must seemingly descend
as in its coastal carriage —
each wave wearily catching and
crashing into the next —
a hatching — a harmony or honing
(if you will) of this we this coast
this I — long abandoned – a nest
or home ever as even as it is just —“

Layered, erased, just beyond as in waves tugging at memory, at longing of and for and letting go, and coming and leaving, of sound and silence. Each phrase reaching just after that which has just—

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

The "new I" is "her" or "her(o)," on "everturning" an emergence of perceptions smacking with each phrase on new angles and interjections. The book moves through sections of wildly differing formal investigations, sometimes narrative, as clear as "Seeing past her own fucking mess in the kitchen," and sometimes mad explosions of vispo. Each section offers a (re)transformation of self- and outward recognition, while repeatedly starting over and learning the unmade self anew. Each act in this book practices self-destruction at once with creative generation. We have in Gardner a pure identity, a giftedly honest and formally stunning projectionist of consciousness who imposes nothing upon us but the naked breath of language in the act of happening on a sufficient landscape or raw field of white space to glow in. We have a radical experimentalist with purpose and unabashed human desires, above all to speak and to find shape and resonance in perpetual varieties "an infantine picture--made actual in/its clarification of what simply is."

[Rodney · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s a pleasure to watch Susana Gardner stretch the language out to its full wingspan, displaying the gendered presumptions that give it flight. Her writing lines up “our turmoils in filched onus rows,” then ships them out via “Rouged Ifs” and charged “stutterance” toward “a restless and scattered hopeful.” Herso is my her(o): froward, many-minded, multi-tongued.

[Carrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like how this book starts out very linear and straightforward, and then slowly becomes more and more unreadable or at least very difficult. Kind of like my life.

[Dusie Press · Rating 5 out of 5]

I give it a 5 for all of the work Nicole Mauro has given it in publishing it in tandem with Dusie Kollektiv & her press University of Theory and Memorabilia

with the collaboration and kollektivity yr 3 has for me been the most amazing experience thus far!