In This Alone Impulse

by Shya Scanlon

Poetry. "Locating itself on the boundary between poetry and fiction, IN THIS ALONE IMPULSE is beautifully replete with silence. One has the sense that the world outside is still there but dampened, and being reordered and reformed by the particular and peculiar logic and structures that these syntactically inventive prose blocks have. And yet, despite the formal concerns these pieces seem remarkably human and remarkably painful, opening up the blank avenues of a lone life. With each reading these pieces change, seeming less and less enigmatic and more insistently full of lyrical human meaning. A marvelous and original sequence; there's really nothing else out there like it."—Brian Evenson

Genres: Poetry

65 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2009

About the author

Shya Scanlon's work has appeared in Mississippi Review, Literary Review, New York Quarterly, Guernica Magazine, Opium Magazine, and others. His book of prose poetry, In This Alone Impulse, was published by Noemi Press in January, 2010. His novel Forecast will be launched by Flatmancrooked on November 15th, 2010. He received his MFA from Brown University, where he was awarded the John Hawkes Prize in Fiction.

Reviews

[Adrian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scanlon is sharp-witted, clever, and at times: completely confusing. This book reminds me of the best and worst of David Foster Wallace. Sometimes, you're giggling. Other times you're annoyed that the writer is too much smarter than you are, which makes you angry, and want to punch the writer.

And if that's the case, call him. He'll let you punch him. I have his number somewhere.

[Joe Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shya Scanlon's new book of poems, In This Alone Impulse (Noemi Press, 2009), is impossible to categorize and endlessly rewarding. His ability to play with words, to jumble them, to change their meaning through all this jumble, is what makes it unique, and moving.

None of the poems are longer than seven lines, and within those lines are sharp-witted, playful conversations between the author and his mind, or between his mind and his external environment. At times, the mind works through dreams, and many of these poems, with the way words are arranged or used and misused, hyper-used even, seem to emulate dream dialogues. Scanlon meets and converses with images from his past and present, his family, his childhood, a day at the beach, his loves and his struggles.

Prior to the poems about poet Tony Hoagland toward the last quarter, the book is floating, metamorphosing, getting ready for something. Post-Tony, some of the abstraction that came before crystallizes into something more concrete, a moving forward somehow, and an illumination occurs. There is a little less wordplay and more references to specific physical entities and beings. It's as if Scanlon's awoken from his dream or out of the alone-ness of sleep or meditation back into the physical world and its social activities.

My favorite line in the whole book is in this later section in "Tape around the Wait." "Can I take you to the copy machine and draw light across your skin?" I've read this over and over, and it makes my insides crinkle up like a ball of paper. Every time.

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

First off, this is one of the most elegantly-designed books this year. The poems are set as word blocks and they breathe easily, each word given a nice space to move around in. The words though, sometimes had a hard time getting off the page and into the stickiness of my brain. There are some wonderful sentences for sure though and I can tell that Shya had a lot of fun writing these odd, sometimes dark, sometimes silly works.

[Andrea DeAngelis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Besides having one of the most awesomest author photos ever, In This Alone, Impulse is a stunning and strange journey. I'm struck by so many of Scanlon's poems, that's hard to pick favorites. However, I'm a path, path-work, a rigorous undoing on p. 45 has settled deeply into my senses. This poem's humor and depth resonates particularly the line "I'm sliding into something just north of regret," so subtle and poignant, this seven line poem speaks to the heart of not being what you want without overstating the disappointment. Ultimately, one needs to listen to these poems over and over again to live in their music fully.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

What's interesting to me, is that as I read this, I thought sure, okay, arguably these poems may be all about being alone, and all about impulse, and yet what I kept thinking, is that these are riffs on relationship, all kinds of relationships, with those we love, at least those we love right now, but also with cars, money, language, and the world we are so very much of and in. Maybe the point here, is that even when we are in relationships we are still alone, sometimes, all the time, and driven by impulse, things we can't and don't escape. Maybe.

[Angela Stubbs · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is one of the best I've read this year. Each page is like a little present and Shya has crafted some amazing images and words on the page in a way that keeps you wanting more. The beauty of the work is that you're feeling all the feelings without knowing what it is you're feeling but there's definitely something amazing happening when you read this work! Yay Shya! Bravo!

[J.A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The restraint is what stole me here, the way in which Scanlon pushes the words out and back in, the manner of his language in staying calm yet violent, darkened but sensitive to light. I read each twice, and I went back to others for more. This is a brutally tight book.

[Shya · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wrote the poems in this book alone, in the dark, in a tiny kitchen on Orchard Street in NYC. I was a new NYC transplant, and was heavily under the influence of the city I'd always dreamed about.