The Plot Genie

by Gillian Conoley

The Plot Genie―in its momentum, imagistic vitality, and cinematic and often improvisational arc―resembles the movement of a film more than of a poetry collection. Rich in scene, spanning and recombining a wellspring of story―both visual and literary, old and new―into a simultaneous present, these poems also examine our culture's endless hunger for and production of narrative. The Plot Genie culls and questions what it is that holds any narrative together, and exposes some of the ways that characters behave and take shape when inhabiting a construct created by ideas. At its core, this collection looks at the ways in which we are recreated, inspired, aroused, and persuaded by the power of the stories that we listen to, tell each other, and find ourselves within, searching for human enchantment and meaning. The inspiration for this book is a plot-generating device created in the 1930s by an ex silent screenwriter, Wycliffe A. Hill. The original "Plot Genie"―used widely by Hollywood writers until the late 1950's―relied on a numerical game of chance, including a cardboard spinning wheel used to divine character traits and plot points. A murky underworld constantly created and recreated, peopled by hapless figures waiting to be "dialed up" and sent along multiple and fragmentary narratives, Gillian Conoley's THE PLOT GENIE includes characters of her own invention, contemporary film actors stripped of their veneer by the rapid, shape-shifting powers of the plot genie, and characters from other, older texts, such as Frankenstein. All are ruled by the insatiable plot genie, who herself becomes a character, a force neither fully in charge nor culpable, much like our leaders or guides today. In the plot genie's world, as in ours, the demands put upon characters by the plots in which they participate can be very high, and very hard to appease.

Genres: Poetry

136 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Gillian Conoley (born 1955) is an American poet, the author of seven collections of poetry. Her work has been anthologized widely, most recently in Norton’s American Hybrid, Counterpath’s Postmodern Lyricisms, Mondadori’s Nuova Poesia Americana (Italian), and Best American Poetry. Conoley's poetry has appeared in Conjunctions, New American Writing, American Poetry Review, The Canary, A Public Space, Carnet de Rouge, Jacket, Or, Fence, Verse, Ironwood, jubilat, Zyzzyva, Ploughshares, the Denver Quarterly, the Missouri Review and other publications. A recipient of the Jerome J. Seshtack Poetry Prize from The American Poetry Review, as well as several Pushcart Prizes, she is Professor and Poet-in-Residence at Sonoma State University,[1] where she is the founder and editor of Volt. She has taught as a Visiting Poet at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, the University of Denver, Vermont College, and Tulane University.

Reviews

[Paula Koneazny · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Plot Genie is something of a departure for Conoley. Although there are numerous instances of what I think of as Conoleyesque language ("into the long anarchy before them," "Along the lower serifs of the city, and "will you be my shapeless nonentity under the ancient olive tree" are examples) and although the poems generally employ the poet's almost signature double spacing, the motivation, language and tone of The Plot Genie seem different from earlier books such as Beckon, Lovers in the Used World and Profane Halo. Always an admirer of Conoley's work, I am entirely enthralled with this latest venture. Perhaps because I too am intrigued by language-generating devices (here taking the form of The Plot Genie, a plot-generating system created in the 1930s by Wycliffe A. Hill, a former silent film screen writer)fragmented narrative and narrative strategies employed for other than story-telling ends. A group of stock characters wander in and out of the poems: Miss Jane Sloan, Redhead, Handsome Dead Man, Comedy Boy and E & R(whom we end up cheering on, hoping that they will at least once land in the same love story). Conoley's love of cinema, particularly films from the 30s, 40s and 50s, once again inflects her poetry to good effect. I intend to re-read The Plot Genie soon for further enjoyment.

[TSK · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really don't know how else to say this, so I'll just be blunt: I have no goddamn idea what this book is really about. I like to think I'm at least decent at pulling out the threads of narrative theme and underlying subtext from a body of work, but this poetry felt as if it was so lost at sea I couldn't even tell where the stars were to orientate myself. It claims to be about characters waiting for the titular plot-genie to come and make them real, but very rarely did I even feel as if we were visiting these characters- and whenever we did, they never even seemed to make coherent sense!

Maybe I'm just not well-read enough or plain too stupid for this kind of poetry, but regardless, I didn't have a good time with it.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Certainly, clever and sharp moments here. I like leafing through it again.

[Rico Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gillian Conoley's The Plot Genie takes its title from a system devised in the 1930s by silent film writer Wycliffe A. Hill, which provided writers with a list of characters and plot elements to be selected at random by spinning a cardboard wheel. In an interview which precedes the book’s release, Conoley says of this work that it is ‘about narrative and not in a strict aristotelean sense in both its powers to enchant us and the lack of a grand narrative we have,’ as well as ‘some of the tyrannies behind narrative.’ She writes in the poem, Culte du Moi, “Our bodies are imitations of the spirit and our statues are imitations of imitations.” Thus, with Conoley’s poetry, we feel spaces being opened within spaces. This is demonstrated in the odd figurations of a house, along with many other characters, of names and of letters, which enter into the realm of the plot genie to find themselves re-assembled intertextually, within the text of the Plot Genie. In this way, we hear a poetry which is aware that its source, even when methodical, is chaotic and subject to the utterance of “ideas” and “earth.” We have a demonstration of the futility of words except as a world unto themselves—a living substance. And the language is embodied by a love for the power of this word—as techne, in the greek—an opening into a pariticular space. This is a beautiful lyric sound which recognizes its poetry as progeny, as a living thing which leads to a re-discovery, in many different forms, of multiple openings, into dwelling and space. It is a poetry which by its enchantment subverts narrative mastery. It is a wonderful poetry founded in a strange beauty.

[Farren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Smart and adventurous, experimental and accessible. The most appealing feature of this book is the archetypal characters (Handsome Dead Man, The Redhead, Comedy Boy, Miss Jane Sloane, E & R) who chase each other through and wake up in strange cinematic worlds meant to mimic everything from Hitchcock and Cassavetes to Reality TV. Wonderful!

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

some moments are great while others make me feel like gillian conoley is too smart to write poetry. not sure if i would've read the whole thing had it not been assigned for class.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Smart, sassy, and challenging in an inviting way.

[Christopherseelie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read my review at The Offending Adam. Coming soon.