Poetry. Deftly combining toughboy wit with a kind of hyper-awareness of language usually only found in Language poets, Kevin Davies' COMP. is a brilliant and hilarious read. Quoth the man himself--I learned the year after kindergarten that sentences are linguistic artifacts with regulations that fill themselves out, and that for the purposes of our circus-cannon ambitions the most important part of the war they enact is the full-stopping dots that divide the booty amongst camp-following berzerkers of the sub-syllabic frontier. Word.
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A challenging, never imprecise cocktail of alternating line-lengths, swift-moving fragments and tautly spaced stanzas plunges each unit of Davies's poemsDword, phrase, page into the realm of social critique. It is the elegance Davies (Pause Button) brings to this project that sets it apart from similar work; not a line is wasted, not a "blank space" trampled on by ego-driven graphomania: "Yet/ what if there is a perfectly natural/ form, and god wants us to kiss it and talk dirty?" The long central poem, "Karnal Bunt," is a sequence of single-page arrangements hanging, like a Calder mobile, with perfectly opposed word-valences maintaining its delicate tensions. "Untitled Poem from the First Clinton Administration" takes the project a step further, adding a note of heatedness that runs up against Davies's constructivist leanings, and releasing a stream of invective aimed at the NAFTA-flattened globe and its pretensions: "They don't care about the details but fuck with the structure and they'll crush your spine/ A shell of other people/ Reflowered/ Pressed into action/ Figures of demented nostalgia/ With diplomas, credit histories/ Unbridgeable gaps where their eyes should be/ The cramp as such/ Like unanswered mail in a bag of donuts/ The entire earth/ Trembles in the throes of its decision-making process." Though cast from the darker corners of the room, Davies' satire (like that of other sometime Vancouver poets Jeff Derksen and Dan Farrell) is not without remaining light, bursting from the clashes of social contradiction with a still-smoldering utopic urge: "Why be sad?/ Kissinger will die/ before they can upload him." Comp., a pun on a "free ride" and "freshman composition," is one of the best books of poetry to have emerged from the alternative scene in years, and is sure to revive many a reader's faith in the possibilities of poetry to teach, construct, goad, amuse, and, incidentally, survive. (Aug.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
PoLangPo,
By Ryan C. Daley "radioryan24" (Providence, Rhode Island United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Comp. (Paperback)
This is one of the best books of poetry I've read. And I've read enough to disdain wasted words on hailing the next fatty to emerge with literary braggadocio. Davies impressed me with "Pause Button". He's floored me with Comp., though. Departing from what might be considered post-avant (or PoLangPo/post-New York School), Davies work claims both an obsession with language and an ability towards an exactitude re the referential of language, making the work instantly "accesible" yet not "dumbed down" or quietist argumentative with a self (nor shelf). At once moving and aggressive, Davies provokes and bears fists, weaves around and penetrates what is truly inventive voice, showing many: "The entire panoply of minimalist histrionics"?! Davies' command and use of English et. al. rouses and douses; each time I open this book I find a new place in it that hits me.
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