Carrie Hunter, The Flow of the Poem’s Display of Itself

 

The light patched uplater, after the fact.
The conversational you,interjected.

Bright, snazzy, fabulousslownesses, fantasticality.
Skipping a comma just tothrow you.
The center disappears inthe middle.
The furniture, what wewalk around,
                           use’s communication
                came to beseen, comes, to seam.

If you view yourself fromwithin the ecoterritory,
and no separate from,
there is no need toreplicate the self. (““Finally, the Memory Became an Object””)

I’mvery pleased to see a new poetry title by San Francisco poet, editor and chapbook publisher Carrie Hunter, The Flow of the Poem’s Display of Itself (New York NY: Roof Books, 2025), following The Incompossible (BlackRadish Books, 2011), Orphan Machines (Black Radish Books, 2015) and VibratoryMilieu (Brooklyn NY: Nightboat Books, 2021) [see my review of such here].Composed in four sections of poems—“Richly Flows Contingency,” “All GabledRoofs Will Fall,” “Poetry’s Anti-Monument” and “The Flow of the Poem’s Displayof Itself”—the accumulated poems read akin to a thesis, offering a book ofpoems on and around poetic structure. “I’ve heard that the subject matter is onits way.” begins the poem ““Glamour and Chrystoprase”,” “No saying exactlycreates a space to pull meaning out of / vs                a specificity which is useless.// Memories mixed up, only recognized as such through changing pronouns.” Thesepoems are nimble, punch-smart and quick, stretching out across a wealth ofliterary reference and citation, as Hunter offers a book on lyric and poeticform, even arguing poetic form as inadequate through those very structures. As shewrites in the poem ““Gravity Isn’t About to Save Us””: “The difference betweendisintegration and return. / Awareness as a scientific measurement.”

Denise Newman’santi-paradise, Dana Teen Lomax’s guilt.

Model of possibility,“your” possible situation.
An old “chromo” on thewall, innocent as a “lintel.”

Hate-filled cubicle jobs
             and how that leadsto an explanation
                                           of what Osiris would do.

How snow is truth and howyou show truth.
Against reinvention andfor becoming more and more the self.
Votive angel gatekeeper’sactions at the gate. (““The Saga of the Sheepgirl and Her Friend / the PelicanMerchant””)