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F̶l̶u̶n̶g̶ Throne
Poetry. LGBTQIA Studies. A glitchy trip through the poetics of the (un)natural, FLUNG THRONE is a descent through and disassembly of language that rages and bursts apart before receding back into the earth. Emerging here is a poetics against the poetic, a reckoning of word and world. Prophetic, angry, yet still reaching for light, author Cody-Rose Clevidence notes the work's dark undercurrents, "We, psychologically speaking, are ill equipped to bear the throes of our own mental, social, and emotional neural chemistry, our consciousness is a cruel trick the universe has played on the world/ourselves. I was feeling all that and also I was falling in love with the woods I found myself in." Awed and repulsed by humanity's capacities – even that of a lyric gaze – Clevidence's second collection distills writing to its phonemic essences and situates them in the kind of wilderness that overtakes abandoned parking lots when nobody is looking.
144 pages, Paperback
Published June 15, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 18, 2023
The last time I was at MOMA, there was this AI-generated artwork in the lobby and it kept turning itself inside out and inside out. It was somewhat fascinating. Or what I liked was the fluidly connecting impulse, making it feel like a neverending series of creative impulses. Everything felt newly wrought or generated newly. The lines were continuous and then they were inside-out arranging a new scene with lines emerging from it to make another scene. I imagine this as a reasonable analogy for Cody-Rose Clevidence’s book, at least in its overt gesture towards creation. An idea that creation isn’t so much about a single origin. What creative moment is, though? Especially with Clevidence’s work. I find their books reveal a multiplicitous sensation around creativity. And perhaps this serves as implicit critique for any mythos claiming to be “created out of a single moment.”
I would say Flung Throne serves a more explicit critique of that single origin creativity idea. Or to think more deliberately about it. The book feels like a Creation Story. As in earth or the universe or just plant life. If there is something magical about the creative impetus, and tracing backward to discover what looks like the original moment, the originality of it, that’s Clevidence’s style of creative thinking.
The poems enact that continuousness of originality, like that AI-generated art. But that’s where the art analogy ends for me. Because for Clevidence seeing the creative is also about the human getting in the way of seeing whatever’s original on the page. The confusion of what made it be. The noise of all the ways to describe its being. The privileging of “humanity” as reference point for describing or discussing or analogizing what is seen as creative. What if creativity was so of nature that the nature was huddled over it, like kudzu. But more species-diverse than only kudzu.
When I read the opening poems, the sensibility threading its way through blocks of nonsensical text, all I can think about is Clevidence’s creative ooze and undermuck taking a stand independent of language or sensibility. Then conceding to language only to be unsure whether this concession need be necessary. The determinism of just making, reproducing, finding a language that is as dense and startlingly present as what creation is. Or the life existent and evolving over the history of earth, especially when placed against the vacuum of a history of the known universe.
I would say Flung Throne serves a more explicit critique of that single origin creativity idea. Or to think more deliberately about it. The book feels like a Creation Story. As in earth or the universe or just plant life. If there is something magical about the creative impetus, and tracing backward to discover what looks like the original moment, the originality of it, that’s Clevidence’s style of creative thinking.
The poems enact that continuousness of originality, like that AI-generated art. But that’s where the art analogy ends for me. Because for Clevidence seeing the creative is also about the human getting in the way of seeing whatever’s original on the page. The confusion of what made it be. The noise of all the ways to describe its being. The privileging of “humanity” as reference point for describing or discussing or analogizing what is seen as creative. What if creativity was so of nature that the nature was huddled over it, like kudzu. But more species-diverse than only kudzu.
When I read the opening poems, the sensibility threading its way through blocks of nonsensical text, all I can think about is Clevidence’s creative ooze and undermuck taking a stand independent of language or sensibility. Then conceding to language only to be unsure whether this concession need be necessary. The determinism of just making, reproducing, finding a language that is as dense and startlingly present as what creation is. Or the life existent and evolving over the history of earth, especially when placed against the vacuum of a history of the known universe.
August 23, 2025
"I WILL PLOW U W CLOVER & REAP U"
Incoming as natural, destructive (that’s a good thing) yet seepingly bright. So porous.
F̶l̶u̶n̶g̶ Throne begins with erosion as erotic, so strongly with KING//DOM. The next two chapters made stone feel light or like light, then broken down “a pattern climaxes at form” (p14) and “not all desire is climactic” (p44) into each poem’s surroundings. I loved (p73):
in the midst of green and gray and lights and darks, i felt welcomed outside reading this: just fuck the throne you wanna sit on
Incoming as natural, destructive (that’s a good thing) yet seepingly bright. So porous.
F̶l̶u̶n̶g̶ Throne begins with erosion as erotic, so strongly with KING//DOM. The next two chapters made stone feel light or like light, then broken down “a pattern climaxes at form” (p14) and “not all desire is climactic” (p44) into each poem’s surroundings. I loved (p73):
“& thru & through
u throat & song
moral parallelogram fear me
fear not, iron, nodding, bobbin,
leave us, @ best leave me
incomplete
wrap the rock in gauze then swallow it.”
in the midst of green and gray and lights and darks, i felt welcomed outside reading this: just fuck the throne you wanna sit on
January 3, 2022
Alienating; frustrating; confusing; moving; gorgeous.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews