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A Series/A Sequence

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Dirk Stratton

September 2008

Joseph P. Wood

Dirk Stratton’s new chapbook of poems, A Series/A Sequence, is a throwback of sorts. In an age where E-Books and particularly E-Chaps are abundant due to the explosion of the blogosphere and readily available publishing software, Stratton’s chap is handmade and released in a very limited run. The book is constructed “old-school”: side stapled, stock cover, paper one could find at a neighborhood Kinkos. Rather than seeming fly-by-night and hurried, however, A Series/A Sequence is lovingly made, with beautiful embossed imprints on each cover – notice I do not say the “front” and “back” of the book. A Series/A Sequence is actually two separate suites of poems that are thematically and aesthetically linked. Hold the book one way, one can read through “Capitulation Suite,” which constitutes the Series part of the chap. Flip the book over and one discovers another suite of lyrical, borderline-concrete poems entitled “Laiku,” which makes up the Sequence. In constructing the chap in this manner, NeO Pepper has joined a growing movement of grassroots to make poetry books that are pieces of art as opposed to mass-produced commodity. The pleasures of A Series/A Sequence rest in its construction as much its poetry, though one feels inextricable from the other.

Dirk Stratton’s new chapbook of poems, A Series/A Sequence, is a throwback of sorts. In an age where E-Books and particularly E-Chaps are abundant due to the explosion of the blogosphere and readily available publishing software, Stratton’s chap is handmade and released in a very limited run. The book is constructed “old-school”: side stapled, stock cover, paper one could find at a neighborhood Kinkos. Rather than seeming fly-by-night and hurried, however, A Series/A Sequence is lovingly made, with beautiful embossed imprints on each cover – notice I do not say the “front” and “back” of the book. A Series/A Sequence is actually two separate suites of poems that are thematically and aesthetically linked. Hold the book one way, one can read through “Capitulation Suite,” which constitutes the Series part of the chap. Flip the book over and one discovers another suite of lyrical, borderline-concrete poems entitled “Laiku,” which makes up the Sequence. In constructing the chap in this manner, NeO Pepper has joined a growing movement of grassroots to make poetry books that are pieces of art as opposed to mass-produced commodity. The pleasures of A Series/A Sequence rest in its construction as much its poetry, though one feels inextricable from the other.

Though both “Capitulation Suite” and “Laiku” occupy the same book and are compliments to each other, each suite displays a wildly different aesthetic. At the heart of “Capitulation” are big, fat existential questions: what meaning do we derive from existence? Why do we construct stories to make sense of our experiences? These are not poems where the 21st century world enters with cell phones and plasma TVs. Rather, they are located strongly in a generalized, philosophical world, such as in the suite’s sixth section:

Loving both the singular and the constant,
it’s clear why we’re addicted
to frontiers, why we need new ones
every day. Once stepped on, the moon
bores us.
            And we felt cheated: billions
spent to be first, for what? Footprints?
A flag hanging like laundry? A box of rocks?

In this zone of middle distances,
lost against those vast closed
spaces of fact, we are cairns
of flesh and bones, mobile markers
of mortality, rolling from the center, staggering
in the wake of our steadfast waste, our chaos
too small, and our ghosts too eager.

While stepping on the moon is a relatively new phenomenon, considering its meaning is not. This excerpt incorporates references to The Tao of Physics and to Nietzsche (who was referencing Copernicus). Stratton’s Series manages to take on broad ideas without lapsing into the static language of philosophy. Instead, his work displays a lyrical compactness and astute ear (the sonic patterns of “m” and “s” in the final stanza, for instance). More importantly, the poet arrives at no answers, but instead gestures towards other larger questions of existence and meaning. In a way, Stratton’s aesthetic harkens back to Stevens or Yates, and more recently, William Bronk, who made a living on straddling the line between philosophy and poetry. Yet, Stratton’s poems overtly criticize our use of narrative – and by extension, the confessional/self-referential poetry that has been an American staple these past few decades. In this way, these poems feel like a timely response to a major strand of contemporary American letters.

On the other hand, Stratton’s second suite of poems, “Laiku,” inhabits a completely different universe: the nature lyric, though with a concrete-poem sensibility. The poems appear as if they were hammered out on a typewriter, and they tend to be all over the page. Moreover, the poems also break words up, often letting letters of the same word drop to the next line or simply space the letters apart on the same line. I kept thinking back to the work of John Hollander and others of his ilk, who wanted to prove the typewriter could bring a truly tactile sense to poetry. Yet, “Laiku,” at its heart, is a suite of nature lyrics. The first two poems frame the suite: they focus on human consciousness and perception. After that, the poems are broken up by season, each offering there own types of tightly lyrical, emotionally big moments, such as in one of the numerous sections entitled “Winter”:

in the blue calm

after the blizzard
                squirrel
            tracks
            ten
            ta
            tive
progress

Though the stanzaics are quite different, one is brought back to Snyder here, and perhaps other West Coast nature poets of the 60s and 70s (particularly with the de-emphasis on human will and story). Though some might find this kind of poetry in a modern context somewhat imitative, I believe it has a profoundly different effect within the context of this chapbook. “Laiku” is the natural response to “Capitulation Suite”: if humans forgo their stories, what’s left? The answer, simply, is to exist, to be part of the larger cosmic order. This concept might not be a radically new thought, but Stratton’s placement of it within a call-and-response is quite inventive. Ultimately, Stratton is not simply “making the old new”; he and NeO Pepper, in their localized way, are encouraging contemporary poetry readers to think beyond their era’s attitudes and predilections.

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