Customer Reviews

100 Notes on Violence (Sawtooth Poetry Prize Series 2009) (Sawtooth Poetry Prize: 2009)

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Like most small-press books I manage to locate and find, Carr's 100 Notes on Violence is constructed poorly: the pagination goes 1-68, 61-68, 85-109, meaning that I am missing pages 69-84. And I wonder, of course, what poetics occurred during those pages.

I like the progression of the text. I like how Carr's notes build upon each other. How the second line of the text is

I'm attracted to children, feet like little suns

and it isn't until note 30 and beyond that we again see "feet like little suns" and hints of pedophilia. I like witnessing a note ending and another starting so similarly, with the same words, speaking of the same subject, etc. I wasn't bored. I also wasn't enamored. I have no doubts that Carr is a brilliant poet, and I too commend her discussion of violence, but I cannot imagine that she was rightfully chosen as the winner of the Sawtooth Prize. This is not to say that I did not like 100 Notes on Violence: quite the contrary. I liked it, but I wonder if I understood it, if it is not the subject that is award-winning instead of the poetry found within the pages.

The first thing I noticed immediately is the way I am enamored by Carr's half-rhyme. I wanted to note each instance of it in the margins, but after the first note, I quickly realized that it would take more time than I have to offer such a project. I did note, however,

My son is wroth, my daughter too, and me, myself, I am wroth. A fugitive
on the earth, and a vagabond. (49)

This, and coupling "airspace" with "delay," not only for its descriptive connotations, but for its meter, its sound. I too liked more overt rhyming, as found later in "happy air - green green canopy - not to be timid - not to be impeded" (92).

It was not this that elevated 100 Notes on Violence to greatness for me: that greatness was found in the reality, strength, honesty, and courage of phrases like "hard window-staring" and "Of being alone: The inside of my lip is raw. Tastes raw" and "just as I feared, violence began to seem banal" and "I'm on a mission. I can't stop." These are the moments I live for while reading poetry: self-reflexive, referential, honest, personal moments that sound more like nonfiction than poetry. (Not that I see much of a difference.)

The collection as a whole folded in on, avoided, walked through, and spoke to itself. The feigning that each note is somehow transcribed from notes scribbled in a book paired with emails with others' stories with website descriptions with what can only be Carr's true voice, speaking of the project itself.

(from my blog, smokingship.com)