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The Network
"Jena Osman subjects American history to a rhizomatic genealogy. What she finds . . . are the foundational, intersecting forces of slavery, finance, and empire at the heart of new world settlement."Michael Davidson
A practitioner of socio-literary engagement continues her investigations in this network of connective texts.
- GenresPoetry21st Century
118 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
March 12, 2014
You think you know what a book of poetry is? Huh? Do ya, punk?
If you do, I bet your idea of it resembles in no way this strange little tome The Network. I'm having trouble finding things to call it; I'm having trouble stopping:
Jena Osman's The Network is
* a conceptual public art piece in modest paperback form.
* a tourist handbook explicating the history, culture, economics, and language of the northeastern United States, except this guide is common only in a strange alternate dimension where poetry is a mainstream form of information dissemination, but not so strange a dimension that such a guide would not have photos, maps, and diagrams.
* a machine processing the intersections of cash, sugar, skin color, etymology, city planning, comic books, and congressional hearings, obeying its alien-programmed emphases.
* an arty cover-version of the found diary kept by a Manhattan mental patient suffering from reference mania who saw connections everywhere across space and time, but sticking only to the ones that turned out to be factually accurate.
* the findings of a computer virus that became sentient and curious about how financial-capital facts interact and why things are how they are, expressed in a compact form to avoid detection.
* a history textbook from the future, after the artificial divisions between genres, formats, and academic fields have been dissolved.
Unfortunately these all have an alienated or inhuman aspect, and are thus utterly misleading about this actually pretty personal work. Well, perhaps not utterly. Poetry books are rarely praised for their etymological root trees or Harper's-Index-style lists of events in the history of U.S. colonial finance.
Well one is. Now. Check it out:
Opening a book to find an epigraph from Borges is usually a good sign. Then a currently overused word (the title) pops up when you learn that it's a series of interconnected "networks." [brackets mine, allll mine]
Network One: The Knot [of relations, etymological and otherwise]
Network Two: The Joker [of, yes, Batman fame, and more]
Network Three: The Franklin Party [an expedition that was no party]
Network Four: The Financial District [Wall Street was once a wall]
Network Five: Mercury Rising (a visualization) [kaboom]
While interconnected, each of these poems (?) explores interconnections themselves, between the geneology of terms (Accuracy, Scour, Procure, and Securities all being related) and seemingly unrelated cultural artifact (Victor Hugo and... BATMAN? Yes! Really!). The streetsigns of New York City are besmirched by the names of horrible people and chilling events, now mere neutral print recited to cabbies, carrying buried worlds of instructional information like dormant DNA.
This is a cool book, punk!
If you do, I bet your idea of it resembles in no way this strange little tome The Network. I'm having trouble finding things to call it; I'm having trouble stopping:
Jena Osman's The Network is
* a conceptual public art piece in modest paperback form.
* a tourist handbook explicating the history, culture, economics, and language of the northeastern United States, except this guide is common only in a strange alternate dimension where poetry is a mainstream form of information dissemination, but not so strange a dimension that such a guide would not have photos, maps, and diagrams.
* a machine processing the intersections of cash, sugar, skin color, etymology, city planning, comic books, and congressional hearings, obeying its alien-programmed emphases.
* an arty cover-version of the found diary kept by a Manhattan mental patient suffering from reference mania who saw connections everywhere across space and time, but sticking only to the ones that turned out to be factually accurate.
* the findings of a computer virus that became sentient and curious about how financial-capital facts interact and why things are how they are, expressed in a compact form to avoid detection.
* a history textbook from the future, after the artificial divisions between genres, formats, and academic fields have been dissolved.
Unfortunately these all have an alienated or inhuman aspect, and are thus utterly misleading about this actually pretty personal work. Well, perhaps not utterly. Poetry books are rarely praised for their etymological root trees or Harper's-Index-style lists of events in the history of U.S. colonial finance.
Well one is. Now. Check it out:
Opening a book to find an epigraph from Borges is usually a good sign. Then a currently overused word (the title) pops up when you learn that it's a series of interconnected "networks." [brackets mine, allll mine]
Network One: The Knot [of relations, etymological and otherwise]
Network Two: The Joker [of, yes, Batman fame, and more]
Network Three: The Franklin Party [an expedition that was no party]
Network Four: The Financial District [Wall Street was once a wall]
Network Five: Mercury Rising (a visualization) [kaboom]
While interconnected, each of these poems (?) explores interconnections themselves, between the geneology of terms (Accuracy, Scour, Procure, and Securities all being related) and seemingly unrelated cultural artifact (Victor Hugo and... BATMAN? Yes! Really!). The streetsigns of New York City are besmirched by the names of horrible people and chilling events, now mere neutral print recited to cabbies, carrying buried worlds of instructional information like dormant DNA.
This is a cool book, punk!
April 30, 2018
Like most everyone, I have trouble classifying this work, but most definitely it is "cross genre" or "other." Osman's Barthian multi-tiered explorations weave somberly invigorating zones. I really savored this book.
Read
March 20, 2015A concatenation of sometimes interesting factoids in a form resembling a writer's journal or brainstorm that has been whipped into a presentable and arbitrary shape. An interleaving of texts which begin cryptically and build towards something more expressive. Some expressions of rather conventional political sentiments along the lines of white people have been and probably still are racist, commerce and industry are bad. A skeleton built upon etymology, the science of puns. Add in a science-fiction chase scene, some stuff about superheroes, and poetic musings on mercury. Invoke, through structure, repetition, and themes, the vague paranoid notion of the interconnectedness of everything.
A book.
A book.
January 2, 2022
I read this poetry collection for my „Global Poetry“ class. Some sections were interesting, for example 'The Franklin Party ' or the historical parts of the 'Financial District'. Others were meh, I just don't connect with this kind of poetry and would not pick it up voluntarily.
December 12, 2015
Let us not forget the Kudlow Creed: free market capitalism is the best path to prosperity. Unfortunately markets don't move in a linear fashion but grind through unavoidable business cycles of boom and bust. Joseph Schumpeter described this "gale of creative destruction as a "process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the ecomonic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one." He derived this theory of economic innovation from Marxist theories on the accumulation and annihilation of wealth under a capitalist system. Government has an important facilitatory role in establishing and maintaining a level playing field in a safe, healthy environment. Therefore, rules and regulations are vital to free and fair markets. As Osman points out, the temptation to game the system through crony capitalism and "joker" legislation will always be difficult to eliminate. Without term limits, lobbyists and PACS from both political aisles will be able to exert monumental control over legislation to the detriment of the average citizen.
April 17, 2012
It's rare, thousands of years into the history of the written word, to come across something that seems truly unique. Osman's "poems" are also mini history lessons, etymological surveys, and stories. Whether it's the Joker, the NYC financial district, or mercury (and Mercury), Osman dissects these words, events, and concepts to their fundamental electrons and protons. As a scientist, I'm used to the idea of picking something apart to see how it works. These poems do just that at a literary and historical level. Fascinating stuff.
November 5, 2011
The most audacious and astonishing poetry collection of the decade, oh my god, read this or I'll find you and leer at you like a fucking creep. This book literally totally reconfigured the way I thought about poetry and the ethics of poetics, and almost entirely predicated my decision to get my master's at Temple (where Osman teaches). It's a life-changer, everybody! Get at it!
January 19, 2011
These poems are often like having one of those long circular conversations that years of friendship encourage: layers and tangents and shared meanings...
October 21, 2012
delicious work that opened me to new methods of understanding. a lot going on in many forms, recommended.
April 10, 2013
The sections are very far in what they accomplish, in my opinion, still it works very well as a whole. I just have an very ambivalent reading experience.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews