[New-Poetry] Re: New-Poetry Digest, Vol 33, Issue 35

[David Baratier]

Theory of Orange   by Rachel M. Simon
from Pavement Saw Press
ISBN: 978-1-886350-45-8
  is now available
   
  "Improvisation" is a quintessential Poem of Our Moment: fast moving and declarative, wobbling on the balance beam between associative and dissociative, somewhat absurdist, and, indeed, cerebral. Much talent and skill are evident in it's making, in its pacing and management of gaps, the hints and sound bites which keep the reader reaching forward for the lynchpin of coherence. One admirable aspect of the poem is the way it seems capable of incorporating anything... even as the poem implies a world without sequence, the poem itself has no consequence, no center of gravity, no body, no assertion of emotional value.

--POETRY

   
  Hip, funny, moving and at times bizarre, this first outing from the Yonkers, N.Y.–based Simon stitches together the elegiac with the entertaining, the fragmentarily outré with the clearly autobiographical: they make an attractive weave. The poems (almost all shorter than one page) include, as she phrases it, "getting-to-know-you-games," multiple tributes to summer camp and "family funerals." Several elegies appear to lament the friend and writer, dead at 21, to whom Simon dedicates the book. "Neither bitter nor embittered,/ non-eponymous but partially self-referential," Simon is also partial to self-portraits composed in apparently unrelated sentences; to in-jokes against writing-workshop platitudes ("No surprise for the writer,/ no surprise behind door number three there is never a car"); and to baffling one-line quips ("My blood is completely cheese"). She can wring comedy from nostalgia, and nostalgia from the detritus of modern childhood: "I hoped that/ by sending a
 box of twinkies/ you'd remember to remember me." Yet her flirtatious advertisements for herself double as postmodern queries into the dangerous culture of advertising, where men and women risk disappearing unless they find something new to say. (Feb.) 
   
  ------Publishers Weekly
   
     
In Theory of Orange, Rachel Simon aims her clear-eyed gaze at life’s odd, irresolvable circumstances and “tells it slant.”  Simon’s poems sparkle with freshness, verve, and above all, humanity.  Understated wit, wry intelligence, and honed language are hallmarks of this decidedly original first collection.

--Joan Larkin
    

  Book can be ordered using paypal direct from Pavement Saw at:   
http://www.pavementsaw.org/books/orange.htm
   
  or from the SPD website
  http://www.spdbooks.org/Details.asp?BookID=9781886350458
   
  or by calling 1-800-869-7553
   



Be well

David Baratier, Editor

Pavement Saw Press
PO Box 6291
Columbus, OH 43206
http://pavementsaw.org
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