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Faceless Names
Faceless Names resounds from the ancient mesas of New Mexico, the Sangre de Cristo mysteries, the archetypical Demeter and Persephone, at last singing their own voices, sculpted, carved out of language. “Word you’re an entity of/hands & clay,” Anna Elena Eyre chants to the loving and the gone, in the poetic diptychs “Letters to Williams and Kora,” (in Hell) and the variable couplets of “Letters to Evelyn,” reaching back to Rhea, the earth grandmother. All sound is grounded in the body, assembling a fruitful language punctuated by space, halting hastening exhilarating—a new, native mythology. —Gloria Frym Read this book in the dark, with a flashlight. Read this book when you are open, really open to the world, to your world, to language and rain. Anna Elena Eyre writes magnificent poems, poems that breathe and sing and imagine and paint. I am very grateful to her. —Joseph Lease
100 pages, Paperback
First published January 6, 2012
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May 13, 2014
Faceless Names, written in an essence similar in conveyance to what Robert Duncan called ‘psychic language,’ gives shape to dreams and in such gives shape to truth which in itself might also be a dream. Anna Elena Eyre in the salutation and address of correspondence constructs a poetry of connection through a lack of necessity. “notes are not necessary and that is precisely why to take note.” Likewise, in writing letters which are assembled of notes taken, recipient and sender are brought together in the act of noticing or being made to notice certain possibly unnecessary feelings, ideas, events, sensations, etc.
Here in this notion of connectivity lies the sentiment of the collection. This lay-out of letters exchanged between author and author passed and author’s work, followed by corresponding poems of differing styles is then concluded with a more direct correspondence between Evelyn and her grandmother. Connection can be one to one or through conduit. The paper acts as a wire for which the psychic language can close the circuit of dreaming and communicating in adimeadozen. Whereas the same paper of Letters to Evelyn allows for a closeness to be established in an abstract narrative. Both halves of this book approach gently the idea of confiding and conveying as an inherent role of connection.
The letter to W Carlos W which precedes the poetic call and response to follow begins with the idea of confiding. “mean to give away secrets?” In the poetics of enjambment and fracture, words in one are thrust together while in another, phrases are split from one another by the slash (/). What this structure does is, it makes the reader go in for another examination to see what could be hidden in the nuance of combining certain morphemes and phonemes in a specific order.
Trickery, but far from being a trick, words are filled with many possibilities and therefore (mis)understandings -missed and missing connections. One such example of slick nuancing comes in “gravitate to words to wards towards.” What other way is there to think of language’s raw material than as structures or spaces for containment and maybe punishment, maybe healing? Wards and words though distant in meaning come so close in sound so as to bring about another view of both when placed in close proximity to one another. Phonologically minimal pairs such as these are gold treasured by pun makers but when used in these lines/stanzas, they are not to be taken lightly as one would the joke of many puns. These are to be taken deeply as the dream which lingers through day asking for further interpretation.
Yet, when one is alert and aware of the dream what kind of interpretation is possible? “wake distortsleepdistorts wakedistorts sleepwake distortsolid liquid horizon.” In lines of this nature, the reader is left to find sentiment within the restraints of style and language itself. That is to say, by forcing ‘distort’ onto ‘sleep,’ grammar is undermined as wake distorts sleep if ‘distort’ is the verb thrust between the two states. Again, further on, the ‘s’ necessary or expected for an English third person verb is swallowed by the initial ‘s’ of ‘solid.’ Distortion is created and confirmed by combination. In some ways, does connectivity when too connected distort, change and break down the connected?
Letters to Evelyn might suggest perhaps not. “some of my skin/is yours/as well as theirs/nameless –soldiers /ours,” Though separated by a generation, connectivity feels firmly in place so much so, that connection is given to more than just the family unit but out to the nameless soldiers of the world. When looking at this line and its idea, one could ask what is the purpose of a name? Name orients, it gives one a way to address and identify another person. Without a name, one can become a bit blurred or dreamlike but in this particular letter, even without name, connection comes in something more concrete than an assembly of letters/sounds but in skin.
This poem juxtaposes the previous one which ends ‘a name forgotten.’ Memory and forgetting are a part of all experience. Events occur and are either retained or slip away. Sometimes the notable events are passed on to a listener. “& you never knew a soldier -your son to retell his war story” keeps memory to one person –breaks connection on a more personal level. Thus later in the same piece, “Grandmother/ is there something you want to say?” A direct question is asked and Grandmother is re-addressed more formally than with the Grandma of the letter’s beginning. The poem becomes a conversation but the answer will have to wait.
Letters like this want to be a discussion and continues with another question which reorients the book to its concept. “do you want to hear your own voice/speak/through the recipes jotted on torn note leaf” Here, the volume returns to the idea of the note but deflates it. The paper itself is torn. The recipe desired to be remembered and possibly passed on is ‘jotted’ which does not really imply any sense of care and concern being put into it. And, most importantly, the voice is reduced to writing. Notes have the ability to connect but lack the sensuality of sound. One can hear their own voice as well as another can hear the voice. There is a connection being played out with the other as well as with the selfsame self. The same self made of the skin which makes others. Voice unlike notes cross boundaries by entering into ears which cannot be closed as eyes can.
Boundaries are the enemy of connection, which is something that Grandmother’s age and wisdom brings to this collection when she writes “boundary-less living” and “there are no boundaries/proven biologically/& in belief.” In belief? In faith? In trust? In hope? There are no boundaries? In hope, Evie would suppose “beneath each line & hidden in exposed margin” and “show me same & different/between them/between us.” This final poem brings the younger into an understanding and desire for the connection so essential to the overall work. Faceless Names ends end as it should in the morn, after a dream ended.
Here in this notion of connectivity lies the sentiment of the collection. This lay-out of letters exchanged between author and author passed and author’s work, followed by corresponding poems of differing styles is then concluded with a more direct correspondence between Evelyn and her grandmother. Connection can be one to one or through conduit. The paper acts as a wire for which the psychic language can close the circuit of dreaming and communicating in adimeadozen. Whereas the same paper of Letters to Evelyn allows for a closeness to be established in an abstract narrative. Both halves of this book approach gently the idea of confiding and conveying as an inherent role of connection.
The letter to W Carlos W which precedes the poetic call and response to follow begins with the idea of confiding. “mean to give away secrets?” In the poetics of enjambment and fracture, words in one are thrust together while in another, phrases are split from one another by the slash (/). What this structure does is, it makes the reader go in for another examination to see what could be hidden in the nuance of combining certain morphemes and phonemes in a specific order.
Trickery, but far from being a trick, words are filled with many possibilities and therefore (mis)understandings -missed and missing connections. One such example of slick nuancing comes in “gravitate to words to wards towards.” What other way is there to think of language’s raw material than as structures or spaces for containment and maybe punishment, maybe healing? Wards and words though distant in meaning come so close in sound so as to bring about another view of both when placed in close proximity to one another. Phonologically minimal pairs such as these are gold treasured by pun makers but when used in these lines/stanzas, they are not to be taken lightly as one would the joke of many puns. These are to be taken deeply as the dream which lingers through day asking for further interpretation.
Yet, when one is alert and aware of the dream what kind of interpretation is possible? “wake distortsleepdistorts wakedistorts sleepwake distortsolid liquid horizon.” In lines of this nature, the reader is left to find sentiment within the restraints of style and language itself. That is to say, by forcing ‘distort’ onto ‘sleep,’ grammar is undermined as wake distorts sleep if ‘distort’ is the verb thrust between the two states. Again, further on, the ‘s’ necessary or expected for an English third person verb is swallowed by the initial ‘s’ of ‘solid.’ Distortion is created and confirmed by combination. In some ways, does connectivity when too connected distort, change and break down the connected?
Letters to Evelyn might suggest perhaps not. “some of my skin/is yours/as well as theirs/nameless –soldiers /ours,” Though separated by a generation, connectivity feels firmly in place so much so, that connection is given to more than just the family unit but out to the nameless soldiers of the world. When looking at this line and its idea, one could ask what is the purpose of a name? Name orients, it gives one a way to address and identify another person. Without a name, one can become a bit blurred or dreamlike but in this particular letter, even without name, connection comes in something more concrete than an assembly of letters/sounds but in skin.
This poem juxtaposes the previous one which ends ‘a name forgotten.’ Memory and forgetting are a part of all experience. Events occur and are either retained or slip away. Sometimes the notable events are passed on to a listener. “& you never knew a soldier -your son to retell his war story” keeps memory to one person –breaks connection on a more personal level. Thus later in the same piece, “Grandmother/ is there something you want to say?” A direct question is asked and Grandmother is re-addressed more formally than with the Grandma of the letter’s beginning. The poem becomes a conversation but the answer will have to wait.
Letters like this want to be a discussion and continues with another question which reorients the book to its concept. “do you want to hear your own voice/speak/through the recipes jotted on torn note leaf” Here, the volume returns to the idea of the note but deflates it. The paper itself is torn. The recipe desired to be remembered and possibly passed on is ‘jotted’ which does not really imply any sense of care and concern being put into it. And, most importantly, the voice is reduced to writing. Notes have the ability to connect but lack the sensuality of sound. One can hear their own voice as well as another can hear the voice. There is a connection being played out with the other as well as with the selfsame self. The same self made of the skin which makes others. Voice unlike notes cross boundaries by entering into ears which cannot be closed as eyes can.
Boundaries are the enemy of connection, which is something that Grandmother’s age and wisdom brings to this collection when she writes “boundary-less living” and “there are no boundaries/proven biologically/& in belief.” In belief? In faith? In trust? In hope? There are no boundaries? In hope, Evie would suppose “beneath each line & hidden in exposed margin” and “show me same & different/between them/between us.” This final poem brings the younger into an understanding and desire for the connection so essential to the overall work. Faceless Names ends end as it should in the morn, after a dream ended.
Displaying 1 of 1 review