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Fieldnotes, a Forensic
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2011 GOVERNOR GENERAL'S AWARD
Her painful legs refused to emerge. It was a question of a particular movement. A passage from analyses to terrifying hallucination. The pressure oozing out of her. Still nursing she held up the head. Her own singular sensation of pain. Ferociously archival proof of an event that left no other material.
Fieldnotes, a forensic charts one forensic anthropologist's series of descents in the first decade of the new millennium - a decade when forensic discourses and experts became ubiquitous in popular culture and on the daily news. But the edgy, passionate and erudite writer of these fieldnotes is no Temperance Brennan or Kathy Reichs. Part parody of popular discourses on the forensic anthropologist, part exegesis of the fieldnote genre, and part response to the natural and human catastrophes that unfolded during the writing of this book, Eichhorn's second collection continues to explore the poetics and affective dimensions of knowledge making at the edges of poetry and fiction.
Her painful legs refused to emerge. It was a question of a particular movement. A passage from analyses to terrifying hallucination. The pressure oozing out of her. Still nursing she held up the head. Her own singular sensation of pain. Ferociously archival proof of an event that left no other material.
Fieldnotes, a forensic charts one forensic anthropologist's series of descents in the first decade of the new millennium - a decade when forensic discourses and experts became ubiquitous in popular culture and on the daily news. But the edgy, passionate and erudite writer of these fieldnotes is no Temperance Brennan or Kathy Reichs. Part parody of popular discourses on the forensic anthropologist, part exegesis of the fieldnote genre, and part response to the natural and human catastrophes that unfolded during the writing of this book, Eichhorn's second collection continues to explore the poetics and affective dimensions of knowledge making at the edges of poetry and fiction.
- GenresPoetry
80 pages, Paperback
First published November 9, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 24, 2017
A swirl of ethnography and poetry dug a burial hole where dirt comforted me for a while with her quick-cut fragmented versed. There is humor, as her illustrative poetic scenes presented a dialogue of a love, loss, sex, work, and self. (Flash cut: insert object)
One of my favorite verses, that I think could take off into another veil of poems:
"How small the choreographed repetition of symptoms. Periodic blindness. Catharsis. Again, the act of finding ourselves in a passage."
So many verses. So many words put together that clench your heart and fist your mind with an experimental obscurity that is the very undertone of Eichhorn's writing.
If you like odd, dark, personal -
you'll like this.
One of my favorite verses, that I think could take off into another veil of poems:
"How small the choreographed repetition of symptoms. Periodic blindness. Catharsis. Again, the act of finding ourselves in a passage."
So many verses. So many words put together that clench your heart and fist your mind with an experimental obscurity that is the very undertone of Eichhorn's writing.
If you like odd, dark, personal -
you'll like this.
November 6, 2011
This work is structured as an anthropologist's field notes interwoven with stage directed dramatic scenes. For me this structure was more impressive than the poetic content, which is a little to skeletal and difficult. Found this from a small Toronto publisher BookThug.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews