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tywissman's review
1.25
I found some images to my liking, but mostly I don't appreciate Gizzi's approach. It seems that Gizzi can't resist resolving things with a "witty" note at the end of the poem to tie things up. It's a very sophomoric move. Also, yeah, "Instagrammar" is so cringe. A lot of this was cringe.
oneironaut's review
5.0
ok so i can explain...
i got a physical copy and had to read it right then and there. that's it i have no other excuse for reading this 3 times in the last month, thanks!
do yourself a favor and read this book.
i got a physical copy and had to read it right then and there. that's it i have no other excuse for reading this 3 times in the last month, thanks!
do yourself a favor and read this book.
gvenezia's review
1.0
I don't get it. For a collection so committed to sound—archeophonics: the recovering of lost sound—I found most of the poems to be surprisingly absent of easily identifiable rhythm and sonority.
When I think of lost sound, especially in the context of poetry, I think of formal structures and oral traditions which rely heavily on legible rhythm and sonority. And there wasn't much else in the collection to suggest a different, meaningful reading of archeophonics. The eponymous poem leading the collecting is too abstract and cryptic and fire-obsessed to suggest a specific, useful reading.
Perhaps the epigraph a page before should have offered a clue?
So maybe my looking for sonority and rhythm is antithetical to Gizzi's intention? Or perhaps the clue is that I should've stopped here, because I can't really parse what the epigraph is supposed to mean in the context of music, let alone poetry (is not song just the instantiation of music and an instantiation of poetry?)
At any rate I did find several phrases that through their clunkiness do ironically exhibit poetry as not-song.
Sometimes the clunkiness manifests in single words, like in this poem which is putatively about "How to Read":
"openism" sounds awkward; reading to find "mewling" doesn't sound like a pleasant task; "giganto" sounds childish. All these phrases clash with the self-serious tone of this collection and its reception.
Have you ever come down with a "case of the punks"? Well for this awkward predicament, Gizzi awkwardly prescribes a "countertenor":
Note: don't stop to question how a countertenor is being opposed to the already contradictory bureaucracy and punks.
And then in almost every poem, Gizzi enforces clunkiness by forgoing expected pauses via elided commas and periods. There's probably something he's doing with this formally or technically, but it led to awkward reading for me. On top of this, Gizzi often splits lines after just a few syllables, further problematizing legible meter, rhyme, and pleasing prosody. Here's an example from the grossly titled "Instagrammar" poem:
Granted, Gizzi does use recurring imagery throughout the collection—the sun; light on the wood of furniture, floors, and doors; the air and its relation to the body; something about serious aesthetic experience paired with superficial technology or contemporary slang: "creepy," "cool," "Google." So there's a way in which I might have started to make sense of his work as a whole if not through singular poems. However, his looseness between lines and stanzas left the poems feeling unconnected and hollow, despite the repeated themes. This degree of loose abstraction may just be past my aesthetic tolerance, which terminates somewhere around Ocean Vuong's maximalism. Unlike some of Vuong's work—which although at first reads incomprehensible, gains meaning through rereading—Gizzi's work became more flabbergasting while rereading.
I just never got it.
When I think of lost sound, especially in the context of poetry, I think of formal structures and oral traditions which rely heavily on legible rhythm and sonority. And there wasn't much else in the collection to suggest a different, meaningful reading of archeophonics. The eponymous poem leading the collecting is too abstract and cryptic and fire-obsessed to suggest a specific, useful reading.
Perhaps the epigraph a page before should have offered a clue?
"Poetry, like music, is not just song."
—James Schuyler
So maybe my looking for sonority and rhythm is antithetical to Gizzi's intention? Or perhaps the clue is that I should've stopped here, because I can't really parse what the epigraph is supposed to mean in the context of music, let alone poetry (is not song just the instantiation of music and an instantiation of poetry?)
At any rate I did find several phrases that through their clunkiness do ironically exhibit poetry as not-song.
Sometimes the clunkiness manifests in single words, like in this poem which is putatively about "How to Read":
A world of light and a world of openism
...
A human world mewling in the dark
...
A giganto space of silence, time (52)
"openism" sounds awkward; reading to find "mewling" doesn't sound like a pleasant task; "giganto" sounds childish. All these phrases clash with the self-serious tone of this collection and its reception.
Have you ever come down with a "case of the punks"? Well for this awkward predicament, Gizzi awkwardly prescribes a "countertenor":
What if the day were a countertenor
informing us, besting bureaucracy,
offering sustenance against my case of the punks (54-55)
Note: don't stop to question how a countertenor is being opposed to the already contradictory bureaucracy and punks.
And then in almost every poem, Gizzi enforces clunkiness by forgoing expected pauses via elided commas and periods. There's probably something he's doing with this formally or technically, but it led to awkward reading for me. On top of this, Gizzi often splits lines after just a few syllables, further problematizing legible meter, rhyme, and pleasing prosody. Here's an example from the grossly titled "Instagrammar" poem:
We say how
could this be
when did this
happen that
we'll find ourselves
somewhere else
in some future
laughing, why
is it incompatible
I mean what does
it matter, whether
the ship were in
the trees or
the ground was
in the water
Granted, Gizzi does use recurring imagery throughout the collection—the sun; light on the wood of furniture, floors, and doors; the air and its relation to the body; something about serious aesthetic experience paired with superficial technology or contemporary slang: "creepy," "cool," "Google." So there's a way in which I might have started to make sense of his work as a whole if not through singular poems. However, his looseness between lines and stanzas left the poems feeling unconnected and hollow, despite the repeated themes. This degree of loose abstraction may just be past my aesthetic tolerance, which terminates somewhere around Ocean Vuong's maximalism. Unlike some of Vuong's work—which although at first reads incomprehensible, gains meaning through rereading—Gizzi's work became more flabbergasting while rereading.
I just never got it.
dadoodoflow's review
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
fast-paced
4.5
This book sings! Perfect example of if you live the message of the poem than you did not live the poem. Here the message is permanently bound in its rhythmic unveiling. Meaning is always just ahead in the rush of the words and keep catching enough of its trailing fringe to keep on.
margarete's review
5.0
wondrous wordsmithery! deconstructed a lot of the concepts i had of the limitations of poetry and left me in reverence of the power of enjambment and repetition. can’t wait to re-read, as well as explore more of gizzi’s oeuvre
jonjeffryes's review
3.0
There's an impressive amount of artistry in the creation of these poems...they're so gauzy to read I can only imagine the craftsmanship in the composing, but nothing really resonated with me personally. I could appreciate the poems but felt distanced throughout.
chovereads's review
I read this aloud to myself and it was a very pleasing experience.
gagne's review
medium-paced
4.5
A reconfiguration of language and its place within archival existence (the documentation of language's past), Archeophonics is my favorite book of poetry by Peter Gizzi.
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