Spring

by Oni Buchanan

2009 Massachusetts Book Awards Winner

Representing nothing less than a tour-de-force of formal invention and emotional intensity, Oni Buchanan’s Spring encompasses radically contrasting work. Ecstatic, visually intricate rhapsodies are juxtaposed with tight, sonnet-like poems, and wispy columns of verse brush up against large-scale epics and kinetic text. This collection’s point of departure is the paradox of existence as an individual in a political and violent world. All of the formal innovations in this book have in common an urgent need for texture and polyphony, and the poems attempt to discover how to fulfill the individual human responsibility of surviving as a resiliently loving and hopeful living creature. An accompanying multimedia compact disc offers a full Flash-animated version of the printed kinetic work, “The Mandrake Vehicles.”

Genres: Poetry

108 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

"what
sur
viv
es
is b
est
at
su
rv
ival
not
nec
ess
ari
ly
be
st"

4.5/5 stars, and were it only sections III and IV it would be 5/5 stars and probably one of my new favorite collections. The "Dear Lonely Animal," poems were the standouts, not just relatable and devastating and fun but beautifully written, and I also adored "Text Message", "The Bells", and in all honesty pretty much every single poem in those two sections of the book. The more simple Buchanan's verse gets, the more I enjoy it; I, II, and V did not resonate with me nearly as much as the more conversationally written pieces, although there was still plenty of craft to admire. More than anything I appreciate Buchanan's commitment to being weird. Even when I didn't love the weird result, I could always appreciate the weird process that got us there.

[Caitlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This wasn't at all what I expected, being called Spring, most of it had nothing to do with the season, and that's what I was looking for. A lot of the poetry is quite intense, and the author writes in many different styles. It is quite the work.

[Layne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Buchanan is quite a visionary. She experiments and pushes boundaries in a way that stretched my mind; however, I didn’t find her aesthetic rewarding to my tastes.

[Kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a lot to this book. Of course, there is a CD-ROM in the back, that gives a flash animation of the Mandrake poems. I mention it, but it's not really the accomplishment in this book, I think. I'm afraid more attention will be given to it than the poems in the first section of the book (where I think there's a much more interesting experiment with two-toned words inked into the poems), and then how these fit together with the poems in the rest of the book. I so admire the ambition.

[Ron Mohring · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just bought it at Oni's reading Tuesday night. What an awesome reading!