Ethan Vilu : Cellar, by Anthony Etherin

Cellar, Anthony Etherin
Penteract Press, 2018

Made up of short poems originally posted to Twitter over the course of two years, Anthony Etherin’s collection of constrained poetry Cellar is the result of a sustained, dedicated, and above all exceedingly thoughtful writing practice. Published in 2018 by Etherin’s Penteract Press, whose declared focus is on “constrained, formal, and experimental writing”, Cellar exemplifies this commitment by being comprised entirely of anagrammatic (where every line contains exactly the same letters as each other line) and palindromic (where, by letter, the poem is the same read backwards or forwards) poetry. Despite the aura of stringent, potentially harsh formality which such an approach may inspire, this collection of poems produces the opposite effect – it is a wild book, an exercise in euphony, a linguistic roller coaster.

The subject matter within Cellar varies enormously, from the historical English Wars of the Roses to meditations on exoplanets, forests, rivers, and the nature of poetry itself. This cornucopia of disparate topics, united by their beauty and by the particular, regimented forms of the work, produces a powerful feeling of “entire worlds seeming / to merge in wilderness….” – a vast, generalist’s rumination on everything. It is the kind of thing which one may think would be hindered by constrained writing, but which in this case is profoundly enhanced by it. As such, whether the explicit intent was there or not, Etherin has produced with Cellar an eminently strong argument for the urgency and necessity of constrained writing in a poetic world more or less dominated by free verse. It is an argument, and a beautiful one, for the expansion of our poetic terrain – a noble endeavor, and a wildly fun time all the while.

Ethan Vilu hails from Calgary, Alberta. Their poetry longsheet A Decision Re: Zurich was published by The Blasted Tree in March 2020. In addition to editing for NōD Magazine and filling Station, Ethan is also a fledgling bookseller and collector.

Anthony Etherin : Thaumaturgy, by Anthony Etherin

The word ‘thaumaturgy’ — literally ‘miracle-working’, although often used synonymously with ‘sorcery’ and ‘magic’ — was introduced into English by the Anglo-Welsh mathematician and alchemist John Dee, in his 1570 volume Mathematicall Praeface to Euclid's Elements. (Dee, incidentally, was also the first person to use the term ‘British Empire’, but let’s not hold that against him.)

John Dee used ‘thaumaturgy’ in reference to an ‘art mathematical’: the construction of new devices of such mechanical and mathematical complexity that, to those ignorant of their workings, they would seem to be magical in origin — perhaps diabolical. Dee and others like him suffered many accusations of collusion with evil spirits.

Throughout history, works of strict literary constraint have similarly been associated with mystical forces, both daemonic and divine. Palindromes have been found on pagan and Christian amulets; the Greek palindrome ΝΙΨΟΝ ΑΝΟΜΗΜΑΤΑ ΜΗ ΜΟΝΑΝ ΟΨΙΝ (“wash thy sins, not only thy face”) adorns the baptismal font of Hagia Sophia. The Kabbalistic systems of gematria, notarikon and temurah variously employ anagrammatic, tautogrammatic, cryptogrammic and numerological rules (these systems were originally created to decipher esoteric biblical truths, but practitioners of black magic have since used them to devise ceremonial magics supposedly capable of conjuring and controlling daemons...).

Over the years, I have written numerous constraint-based poems, and it seems there’s still plenty of apparent ‘magic’ left in these formal restrictions — even to less superstitious, contemporary minds: My lettristic manipulations on Twitter are often met with light-hearted (I trust) accusations of witchcraft and wizardry. The celebrated magician Penn Jillette very kindly provided a blurb for my October 2019 full-length collection Stray Arts (and Other Inventions) (out now from Penteract Press!). And a Mexican friend recently dubbed me El Brujo, which is a far cooler sobriquet than I have ever deserved.

Stray Arts is a collection of my ‘biggest’ poetic experiments, employing a variety of restrictions, often in combination — palindromic sonnets; palindromes that are perfect anagrams of each other; different styles of palindrome; and sequences of formal anagrams.... The piling on of constraints has, I like to think, something of stage magic about it: reveal upon reveal; wow upon wow. It results from a similar mentality to that of the magician: laborious, intricate planning, relentless practise and preparation, all for a single scene, a single moment, designed to dazzle — and, of course, for the implicitly invited question, How was it done?

Thaumaturgy, my new above/ground press chapbook, features less layered applications of literary constraint. Rather than extravagant stage magic, it presents a potpourri of mystical fragments; delicate, crystalline incantations; small visions, transmuted by an art mathematical.

Included are various forms of palindrome, such as these meditations on the crew of Apollo 11; the first stanza is palindromic by letter, the second by pairs of letters, and the third by blocks of three letters:

Neil A.:

NASA peer.

Craft far,

creep as an alien.

Char sea.

Run, ally Aldrin!

Skies, kind, rally a lunar search....

Oil, kit,

daring wander....

Collins: outer soul.

In colder, waning dark,

I toil.

The chapbook also features lipograms of various kinds. There are triolets and small sonnets. And there are a number of anagram-poems, including this suitably Dee-esque alchemical sermon:

There's magic in blood:

A sober, demonic light

directs haemoglobin —

This iron became gold.

I hope John Dee would approve. He lived in a time when science and magic were, in many respects, one and the same. I like to think a remnant of that synthesis persists in constraint-based poetry.

Many thanks to rob mclennan and above/ground press for publishing Thaumaturgy. Copies are still available! Please order and, I hope, feel inspired to compose your own incantations....

Anthony Etherin

March 2020

Anthony Etherin is an experimental formalist poet, a publisher, and a musician. For more of his poetry, find him on Twitter, @Anthony_Etherin, and via anthonyetherin.wordpress.com