How to Do Things With Words

by Joan Retallack

Borrowing the title of J.L. Austin's important philosophical tract, Joan Retallack seeks through poetry answers to Austin's questions about the relationship between saying and doing. Retallack explores what poetry means and how poetry interests with other intellectual forms -- charts, drafts, encyclopedias, dictionaries, lexicons and games.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1998

Reviews

[Anne · Rating 1 out of 5]

Obnoxiously abstract poetry. Like Gertrude Stein took up arms and declared war on grammar and linguistics upon the English language, except it was all a big mess. Not even a hot mess, just a mess, full stop. Or, it was like a dog went and smashed its face against the keyboard of its owner's laptop, and the owner went "By God, this is genius. I am going to publish this drivel, Dog, and I will take credit for the concussion you just sustained."

There was one excerpt from the chapter titled "The Woman in the Chinese Room" I really liked, however: "In this story to describe roundness you may have to think about a square you may have to retreat from decorum or just spell it out phonetically you may have to find an Oriental Jesus with a vertical smile you may have to calculate the rectilinear coordinates of a blue duskless mountain with the distance of a female Faust."

Overall verdict: Never reaching for a random book off the university library shelf again. Even if the cover employs the pristine use of neon-colored fonts.