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60 Textos

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Sarah Riggs

November 2010

Sima Rabinowitz

An enticing not-quite chapbook, not-quite book, compact little poems in aqua blue ink on smooth ivory stock; lovely deep blue covers with reverse type silver print. When design matters, it matters. So it matters to have this lovely design.

An enticing not-quite chapbook, not-quite book, compact little poems in aqua blue ink on smooth ivory stock; lovely deep blue covers with reverse type silver print. When design matters, it matters. So it matters to have this lovely design.

You can read these poems as a part of a long series, as individual little gems of ideas, or as both. When size matters, it matters. So these little poems matter. They begin with that very concern, what will happen to these small poems with big aspirations:

Where will these
lines go if I
send them to
you? I may send
them between your ribs

They end in text-messaged cyberspace: “from a blue Nokia / to a silver Samsung.” I wish I could say I am as compelled by these texts’ conclusion as I am by their beginnings (and even by their middles: “Spontaneous is another word.”). But, I am disappointed, I confess, in this final little poem. I so preferred their (almost) anti-conclusion, the penultimate “texto”: “Our messages barely / walk but they fly.”

Nonetheless, I appreciate the poet’s capacity for understatement: “A constant sort of / waiting for / something. This is / about to change”; “Sometimes to be sure / of the room I am in / I sit down to write / to you”; “Can we go out of the / world together, even if / we did not come in / together?” I identify with her desire to capture the world in verse: “Am I not / enough with the world / that I want to write / it, too?” And I think she has captured the most human of all experiences in a few smartly chosen words: “I often wonder if I am invisible.”

This is an exquisite little book. “We douse our hopes / with sleep. Is this why / our dreams keep on / sleeping even after / the alarm?” the poet asks. Wake up and read 60 Textos.

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