Noah Saterstrom

I read this collaborative book of prose/poetry because I received the book as "payment" for a review I wrote for Tarpaulin Sky and also because another poet mentioned Gordon as someone whose presence in the literary limelight has been needling him with its ubiquity. After a first reading I contemplate the assignment of value or success in the contemporary poetry world(s). There is nothing particularly innovative about this book. Nevertheless, now and then, fragments coalesce; and show more "sense"(that impossible desire)surfaces, albeit ephemeral and partial. I have the feeling that I've pawed through a cache of miscellany; here and there a nugget sticks to my fingers. After a second reading, it occurs to me that Gordon and Wilkinson's "style" or "process" defies any instruction that every word must matter. Here, which words do matter will, I think, vary from reader to reader. For example, I read several pages or poems without anything lighting up for me, and then, suddenly, a zinger. The overriding question is whether or not these sporadic illuminations are satisfying enough to make the whole book worthy of my attention. As the poets themselves state: "All art is conceptual, but all concepts are not something to hang on a wall next to the rifle." (78) show less