Figures for a Darkroom Voice

by Noah Eli Gordon, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Noah Saterstrom (Illustrator)

Poetry. In prose poems, syntactically elusive sonnets, and haunting, haiku-like fragments, one encounters within FIGURES FOR A DARKROOM VOICE a recurring cast of logically-skewed images, inauspicious yet arresting aphorisms, and characters rendered fully bizarre in the lightest of brushstrokes. Imagine a gallery in which Cornell boxes talk back, a Maya Deren film in which the audience dissolves into projector light, a Philip Glass composition played exclusively on medieval weaponry, such are the compelling results of this collaborative work. The texts of Noah Eli Gordon and Joshua Marie Wilkinson, illuminated by the ink drawings of Noah Saterstrom, fuse into a voice as singular as it is sinister.

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Noah Eli Gordon was an American poet, editor, and publisher.

Reviews

[Zach · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like these guys better together. For me the score here is Eli Gordon 1, Wilkinson 0.

[Greg Bem · Rating 4 out of 5]

I felt my insides illuminate what had come and gone through their invisible rumblings, the text of the tome providing a strange solution of confused tears and salty waters.

[Powells.com · Rating 5 out of 5]

These aren't just two guys with three names each; these are two of the poets to watch in the next generation. Gordon just won the National Poetry Series Open (judged by the legendary John Ashbery) for his book Novel Pictorial Noise, and Wilkinson won the coveted Iowa Poetry Prize for his book Lug Your Careless Body out of the Careful Dusk. Here the two have combined voices for a frisky, lithe, verbal romp. What started as an experiment in poetics, passing a pad of paper back and forth across a cafe table, ended as one of the most interesting books of last year. Think language poetry meets Project Runway. With whimsical drawings by Noah Saterstrom, and published by the always stellar Tarpaulin Sky Press.
Recommended by Alexis, Powells.com

[Paula Koneazny · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this collaborative book of prose/poetry because I received the book as "payment" for a review I wrote for Tarpaulin Sky and also because another poet mentioned Gordon as someone whose presence in the literary limelight has been needling him with its ubiquity. After a first reading I contemplate the assignment of value or success in the contemporary poetry world(s). There is nothing particularly innovative about this book. Nevertheless, now and then, fragments coalesce; and "sense"(that impossible desire)surfaces, albeit ephemeral and partial. I have the feeling that I've pawed through a cache of miscellany; here and there a nugget sticks to my fingers. After a second reading, it occurs to me that Gordon and Wilkinson's "style" or "process" defies any instruction that every word must matter. Here, which words do matter will, I think, vary from reader to reader. For example, I read several pages or poems without anything lighting up for me, and then, suddenly, a zinger. The overriding question is whether or not these sporadic illuminations are satisfying enough to make the whole book worthy of my attention. As the poets themselves state: "All art is conceptual, but all concepts are not something to hang on a wall next to the rifle." (78)