The Cry at Zero: Selected Prose [Paperback]

Andrew Joron (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 15, 2007

Here Andrew Joron, "the metaphysician-elect of contemporary American poetry" (Calvin Bedient) and author of The Removes and Fathom, ranges through literature, science, and philosophy as he maps a poetics, and gripping poetic ontology, that responds to the disturbing politics of our time. Confronting postmodern skepticism, Joron begins from the premise that poets are "chained to the impossible," and that the poetic "cry" exceeds specific social crises. Joron teaches us that more than ever before there is a distinct and obvious place for the unsayable, the abyssal, in our poetic practice. With unmatched lucidity and compassion, Joron's prose works, interwoven here with a series of soaringly lyrical prose poems, are indispensable in our attempts to embrace a creative space that encompasses human experience.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The prose poems and lyric essays in underground poet Joron's first gathering of prose are rooted in the belief that "we are living in an era...of the convergence of science, mathematics, and poetry." Of particular (almost obsessive) interest to Joron is the concept of emergence, important to many of the sciences and defined here as "a qualitative leap of matter beyond the laws of motion to which it previously conformed." "The classic example of an emergent quality," Joron writes, "is water, most of whose remarkable characteristics are entirely unpredicted by those of its constituents, hydrogen and oxygen." The idea that language is "an emergent property of social systems" isn't original to Joron (Fathom), nor is the idea that the "enigma" of poetry exceeds "the properties of its constituent words," but what matters in this context is the phrasing, the poetry, as it were, and Joron's is characteristically impeccable, lapidary, sublime: "Forgetting the social (whose booming echoes rolled over us long before birth), we are // guided through soft interiors of the word mass...." A number of shorter pieces include an appreciation of poets George Sterling and Clark Ashton Smith, the little-known inaugurators of a "distinct tradition of California Decadence," and a brief but intimate tribute to poet and mentor Barbara Guest. With luck this modest but beautifully designed book will bring a new wave of attention to Joron, who is among the most uncompromising, far-reaching, and underappreciated poets writing today.
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Review

The prose poems and lyric essays in underground poet Joron's first gathering of prose are rooted in the belief that "we are living in an era...of the convergence of science, mathematics, and poetry." Of particular (almost obsessive) interest to Joron is the concept of emergence, important to many of the sciences and defined here as "a qualitative leap of matter beyond the laws of motion to which it previously conformed." "The classic example of an emergent quality," Joron writes, "is water, most of whose remarkable characteristics are entirely unpredicted by those of its constituents, hydrogen and oxygen." The idea that language is "an emergent property of social systems" isn't original to Joron (Fathom), nor is the idea that the "enigma" of poetry exceeds "the properties of its constituent words," but what matters in this context is the phrasing, the poetry, as it were, and Joron's is characteristically impeccable, lapidary, sublime: "Forgetting the social (whose booming echoes rolled over us long before birth), we are // guided through soft interiors of the word mass...." A number of shorter pieces include an appreciation of poets George Sterling and Clark Ashton Smith, the little-known inaugurators of a "distinct tradition of California Decadence," and a brief but intimate tribute to poet and mentor Barbara Guest. With luck this modest but beautifully designed book will bring a new wave of attention to Joron, who is among the most uncompromising, far-reaching, and underappreciated poets writing today. --Publishers Weekly

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Counterpath Press; 1st edition (April 15, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933996021
• ISBN-13: 978-1933996028
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,569,831 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Andrew Joron is a writer and musician living in Berkeley, California. He started out writing science-fiction poetry. Joron's poetry gradually evolved toward surrealism and other experimental forms. Joron's later poetry, combining scientific and philosophical ideas with the sonic properties of language, has been compared (by a reviewer in THE NATION magazine) to the work of the Russian Futurist Velimir Khlebnikov. Andrew Joron also plays the theremin in the dark ambient/improv band Cloud Shepherd.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars the pursuit of the unsayable as poetic praxis, November 21, 2007

By 

Matt Hill "PARATAXIS and THE CLOUD RECKONER" (Santa Cruz Mountains, Ca) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: The Cry at Zero: Selected Prose (Paperback)

In this far ranging compilation of essays on poetical ontology, prose poems, and social commentary, Andrew Joron continues in the dense aphoristic style of Norman O. Brown (Love's Body) and E.M. Cioran. "The Cry at Zero" articulates the convergence of science, philosophy, and poetry, mapping an ontology of poetics woven around a series of prose poems from Joron's collection "The Removes".

The density of these high-compression writings - densities of meaning, symbol, and projection - exhibit an interzone between scientific explications, and the traversal of metaphoric space.

It is Joron's belief that, although poets "are chained to the impossible" (B. Guest), the unsayable must be uttered - the apoetic realms just might be negated via the visionary articulations of the poetic stance.

"Where language fails, poetry begins" (1) - and that beginning is defined as the "translation of emergency" - the emergence of this emergency, this poetic opening, is the "sudden break" whereby the "Cry" is released into acts of creation. This is the "springing-forth" (Holderlin) of the enigmatic "original cry" (9), the horizon in which poesis acheives new levels in any attempt to say the unsayable.

It is within this "ontological rupture" (107) that The Cry at Zero becomes the inflection point between speech and silence: the knowing beyond knowing, the act of "ekstasis".

Joron shows us that the poetic endeavor, being an order of words to go beyond words, is a "higher-dimensional" (67), nonlinear, high compression use of language, where "meaning is more than just the sum of the parts" (C. Langton).

In this fractured modern world, where apoesis may be the most fundamental social affliction, poetic expression then becomes a war against the bewitchments of accepting things as they are. "The Cry at Zero" elucidates the ontological orientations of the poet whereby the "translation of emergency" opens up the horizon of zero and the indwelling of the "structures of nothing". For it is in such a void that the "words of abandon" (105) may be found.

This world of ours has now become further enriched by the offering of this fine book by Andrew Joron. It provides us with a guiding beacon such that "by means of poetic language, waves of newness flow over the surface of being" (Bachelard).

Most highly recommended.

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