V: WaveSon.nets / Losing l'Una [Paperback]

Stephanie Strickland (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0142002453 | ISBN-13: 978-0142002452 | Publication Date: September 24, 2002

Prize-winning poet and hypertext pioneer Stephanie Strickland pushes the boundaries of the printed word to create a completely original poetic experience. V is an invertible volume with two beginnings. Turning the volume from WaveSon.nets to Losing L'una and back again, over and over, creates a fluidity that extends to the poems themselves: words slip and pour across numbers that have their own lives. In the undulant fold at the book's open center one jumps, via a Web site pointer, to V's third section, which will exist in electronic space at www.Vniverse.com. V's muse is Simone Weil, and in this new book Strickland's elegy for Weil is widened to include a long line of known and conjured women. An extraordinary work that is meant to be glimpsed and scanned and begun again, V pulses with many orders of knowledge, organization, and rhythm.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

If Brian Kim Stefans's The Dreamlife of Letters (2000)-a gorgeous send-up of Freud, lettrism and contemporary gender-bending-was the first large-scale poem using the internet animator Flash, then this book by Strickland continues to blaze trails of possibility in a new poetic medium. By putting the soul of this book solely online, Strickland reaches beyond True North (1997), which was developed in both print and hypertext versions, and seeks to fully bridge the gap between print and electronic media. The work's bound component consists of two sections, "WaveSon.nets" and "Losing L'Una," printed reversibly (so that either section can be seen as beginning the book, and neither ends it) with a centerfold directing readers to a third, free, interactive section at http://vniverse.com. The printed poems encompass a broad range of thematic concerns-including virginity, body, circuitry, waveforms, wormholes, engineering, parturition, mythology, fractals and witchcraft: "This is hallucinated hearing/ in the service of art, of Arthur's table,// R2, Artemis,/ and Ursa guarding the Pole./ Welcome, then, Presence, Reflection, Shadow,/ Refraction, She Who Stands,// Gnova, Gnomon, Goose, Ouzel, Orca, Longdark,/ Hardware, Software, Wetware, a Dolphin/ leaping, responding/ to the bare boy on her back." And as in previous work, Strickland engages with a wealth of scientific, historical and biographical source material, particularly regarding the life and thought of Simone Weil (also the subject of Strickland's The Red Virgin, 1993). But the point here is the endless combinations created by clicking variously on the Web site's screen filled with gently twinkling stars, which sets off a process of selection, combination, dissolve, and recombination among lines, phrases and sources in the printed text. Strickland's interrogation of structure finally outshines her content, but readers will sense that she is also creating space for future work, both by herself and by others, bringing intelligence and legitimacy to a new form.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Stephanie Strickland is the author of three volumes of poetry and winner of several awards. Her work has appeared in such journals as The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, The Iowa Review, and Ploughshares, and she has produced several hypertext version of her works, including Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (September 24, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0142002453
• ISBN-13: 978-0142002452
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.2 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,378,177 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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