Russell Carisse : Tangled & Cleft, by Matt Robinson

Tangled & Cleft, Matt Robinson

Gaspereau Press 2021

 

 

 

 

When I have finished reading a book that I have enjoyed, and when I come back to it, I often look for different reading routes through the text, searching out patches and proximities of words, looking for secret poems. Usually I pick an arbitrary route, the first word of every line for instance, like this intance, and write down every word verbatim, like a diligent amanuensis. Not all books can hold up to such scrutiny, the results can range from complete surrepetition to elaborate and varied strings. Robinson’s book falls into the latter containing unusual phrases, words, and possibly a distorted echo of his book, the resultant text was fairly large because there wasn’t a lot of excess repetition, plus his book has a lot to say, so what follows is a pared down version, that still retains the original order the words as they appear in the text, and that I feel captures something of Tangled & Cleft’s moods and aspects; a book worth reading more than once, a book that yields to alternative reading habits.

 

This uneven interobanged Now

slipped All new pulling temples at You,

A Right of years simple overheard light

half-full sighing of when, afterglow resting

yet, caul turned undone the coat Last, and ale,

weaponized pugnaciously for inconvenience

betrayed the hillocky hand-me-down hock.

briefly, angry and able sly its world

grudgingly aches in good eschewed.

This jack back worst of manic fractions,

voles, dog-dish-displayed yawns blood-sullen

augur & gate chunneled, or new-scrambled 

audacity chum-bumped like sideshow embossed

endviews you’ll confuse mercies crossed.

autumnal gloom she conjured arcs

of recollections forlornly Forgotten

pods for some quotidian caffeine-cranky

Imperfect script un-knit its new penultimate treble.

These pseudo-scrawled scanion, but crudely

hedging our about and leaves engage our quorum

mealy tins & fallen amongst copse, now against

dank near-questions accumulated detritus,

but Briefly we amazed just Those at school

whose seeming would suspect Paint tears

bloom branches of fists Sometimes do

To Our desperate tar-gummed guile

the menace of near-riotous ligatures

that set again drawn over The unseen. Tacitly

laced, whose of old rink bathroom ritual

pregame, through glibly rough-hewn storms,

what rather aches forgotten thrift-store

snidely precipitate through western logic

of concrete bleaching flight despite wonder.

These rued searching care and compost a wink

How. the lul you stone cuts violently How.

 

 

 

 

Russell Carisse is currently living on unceded Wolastoqiyik territory in New Brunswick. Here they have resettled off-grid with their family of people and animals, to grow food and practice other forms of underconsumption. Russell is the author of chapbooks, BRICKWORKS (Frog Hollow Press 2021), and English Garden Bondage (above/ground press 2022), and the work can be found online and in print. Twitter: @russellcarisse