Guernica
Editions, 2019
I attended Paul
Lisson’s launch at the Supermarket Restaurant and Bar in Toronto (those were
the days!) last year. I was only familiar with Paul via email, through HAL
magazine and a loose connection with Judith Fitzgerald. We’d never met, I knew
nothing of his poetry, I did know from the invitation that this was his first
book, otherwise I had little or no expectations of what I would encounter. To
put it mildly, our initial meeting was a gas.
Paul turned his
launch into something of a theatrical event. Friends were placed throughout the
audience and took turns reading passages from the book while he sat at a table,
in a suit, and hammered away at the keys of an antique typewriter. It was an
indication that the book (and Paul) contained some sense of adventure and fun.
The cover was the next giveaway that this might be the case. Plain and simple,
an archive is generally a collection of documents or records organized under
various rules and regulations so as to be an accurate and easily accessible
account of the activities of a person, family, corporation or ETC, whereas the title of his book has the
word “perfect” raggedly scratched out, as if with a pin or (more likely) a
steel pen nib, a further indication that all (I suspected) would likely not be
what it seemed.
Needless to
say, I was not disappointed. The book is an archive, of sorts, comprised of an
unreliable narrator, a text that continually undermines itself as an accurate
accounting, ie: “Researchers investigating __________ _____ ________’s life are
faced with revisionist histories, shifts in public perception, propagandizing
and censorship… Biographers consulting the family papers privately held, are
advised that they are notoriously unreliable.” Nothing is as it appears;
nothing can be relied upon. The supposed “subject” remains unnamed and (for the
most part, undescribed, except to be charged with criminal activity, to wit:
“his careful cataloguing of our atrocities,” seemingly during WWII. What
atrocities? We are never told). And if you think you might pick up some small
degree of actual autobiographical information from the “subject’s” written
works, forget about it!
There are notes,
poems, prose poems, found poems, list poems, indexes, marginalia (which more
properly should be termed “end notes” says the narrator, also called “small
poems” [apparently] by the mysterious “subject” of the archive), errata and
erratum (which refer to references and page numbers that are unidentifiable
and/or have no relation to the book in hand), appendices, definitions, plus a
series of old black and white photographs that remain unexplained, except to
say that some of the pictures may or may not be those of the “subject.” Further,
in the poem ‘Epochal’ we read: “Vintage photographs blur animal and man.” In
fact, the most [seeming] dependable and extant descriptors are of the various
typewriters used by the “subject” to create his works: “The earliest poems were
composed on an Optima typewriter, vintage 1940… Later poems were added using a
desk-model Olivetti with an oversized carriage and unusual serif font…” So it
continues, the “means” of production being much more clearly labelled and
defined than the “subject” himself (we learn that typed Marginalia was added
during imprisonment using a Remington portable that was “likely loaned
surreptitiously by Captain Walter Kerr, Intelligence Corps” and that written
marginalia “is in the colour Blau-Shwarz inked with a 1938 100N fountain pen” –
perhaps the exact same pen used to scratch out the word “perfect,” why
not?)
Of course,
while we are meant to busy ourselves trying to piece together the life of this
mysterious/elusive “subject,” other clues further undermine the text and point
the reader in (an)other direction(s). On an untitled page that might be an
example of marginalia, we read: “If you want to know how things really work, watch
closely as you’re tearing them apart.” In the poem ‘Necromantic’ we see: “I /
reconstruct / my bones / with others / of dead people / more interesting / than
me.” Under the title ‘Erratum” we note: “Through a misunderstanding, the
painting Abstract Painting was
reproduced upside down in the last issue of the Archive Bulletin.” As an aside,
I remember hearing the story of a well-known artist who, upon seeing one of his
abstract paintings hanging upside down on a NY gallery wall, said, leave it, I
prefer it this way.
It’s a great
little Frankenstein of a book, with lots in it to tear apart, turn upside down,
and reconfigure as some new and entirely provocative monster; something less
about a mysterious “subject” and more about the creative process itself and the
tools involved in that process. Metaphorically (perhaps, even, literally) Paul
reconstructs the bones in order to make himself (the work) more interesting.
I recommend you
dive in and get your hands dirty.
Stan Rogal's natural habitat is the wilds of
Toronto where he exists mainly on a diet of roots, berries and red wine. His
work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies throughout the known
(and lesser known) world. He is the author of 26 books, the most recent being a
novel, titled The Comic (Guernica Editions), not so funny given its
arrival coincides with the "Age of Isolation and Physical
Distancing," a Kafka-esque sort of humour.