|
Reality Test
Secure Portable Space by Redell Olsen
[110pp, £7.50, Reality Street Editions, 63 All Saints Road, Hastings, East
Sussex, TN34 3BN]
|
|
A 'reality test' would test
for what?' Olsen asks. She explores this question in the three poem sequences
and performance piece which make up this book. By using artifice - a
disorientating variety of forms to ensure we are always aware of the shaping
hand on the material - Olsen attempts to shed some light on this question.
The poem 'Noir 1940-51' shoe-horns
film-script into the formal restrictions of poetry, notably the line-break:
EXT:outside we are running: so it looks half remembered - fuzzy edges
along
half-
deserted
in light
crossways
so cut in two
like strips (13)
The technique is to layer artifice on artifice. The glaringly visible cut
which forces us across the blank page from 'deserted' to 'in light crossways' alerts us to the organisation of data - we are
shown the seams. The content is also artificial - directions for a film, left
unrealised in words. Or unrealisable: 'it looks half remembered' is hardly a
direction, or at least difficult to achieve in a film; it would never make it
off the page. So are we to read the extract as direction, or as complete? We
experience this indecision again in the middle ground 'cut in two like
strips' occupies, referring both to poetic and to filmic techniques.
Olsen is at pains to show us that she is interested in exploring the tangle,
not trying to undo it. In this extract, separate discourses meet, not in a
subtle dance of the intellect, but in something resembling a brawl in a night
club:
over shadows
/ existing on heat
rolls shirt to up
after too
long in the flesh:
orchids /
memorised
devious / warm capture
by voiced-over
car careers
vaguely /
-
clouds (20)
The fragments ('- clouds') and slashes (the choice between 'over shadows /
existing on heat' is hard to make as the parts don't seem to share anything -
and as the slashes pile up, adding alternatives, the distinction becomes
harder to draw) show a lack of resolution; interpretations are only 'vaguely'
drawn.
The lyric poem is often a secure portable space - a piece of writing,
recognisably a poem because of its form (most obviously line breaks), small
enough to be carried, physically or mentally. But this type of poem feeds us
'the crap of lyric pigeon': the perfectly constructed thing is complete, and
therefore not interesting. Olsen prefers poetry which allows the reader in.
She pictures her poetic project as outlining an area rather than filling it;
'little circles instead of / dots'. What happens is 'out of shot', and the
'object escapes attention'. We enter a space where it is not clear how we
should read or what we should be looking at; multiple interpretations are allowed.
An example is 'Era of Heroes', which is the transcript of a performance
piece, the performance of which she describes. So the printed piece exists as
the ghost of what it was, or could be. The result is also 15 pages of names;
what you do or don't make of it is up to you.
The inability to settle on meaning (lack of resolution) focuses attention on
our interaction with the text. We notice the meanings we offer words. We come
to understand that artifice can be experienced, interacted with. Just as a spoon
can be used for different activities, so can these words. And so Olsen shows
us that artifice is not separate from reality.
Olsen's poetry shifts forms, and refuses to fit neatly into any one. She also
mixes density with simplicity and even banality to throw off a coherent
reading. In 'Corrupted by Showgirls', the well-known plots of Hitchcock films
are merged into one long piece of prose without punctuation:
musician's life is
ruined because he resembles a hold-up man tries to prevent the kidnapping of
a nuclear scientist flashbacks explain why one woman shot another hideously
scarred woman runs a blackmailing ring woman helps police find husband who is
in hiding because he saw a murder war vet gets involved with the wife of a
blind painter shipping executive (25)
It is impossible to decide where one plot becomes another. For example, 'he
resembles a hold-up man' is a possible sentence. However, we need the
'hold-up man' to 'prevent the kidnapping of a nuclear scientist'. The
'hold-up' also refers to the effect on our reading - we are undecided as to
which possible sentence to accept, and linger. In this way Olsen subverts the
forward motion of plot. She prefers to concentrate on the moment than to
subsume or omit it in favour of the drive to conclude, of an over-arching
vision. 'Not to anticipate narrative but to find it congealed'; Olsen's
poetry is meditative.
'Era of Heroes' lists the names of heroes, and out of the context of their
stories we wonder what their ability is. Often they seem dated (take the
proper 'Hale of the Herald', or the tame 'Thunderhoof'), flat as national
symbols ('Star-Spangled Kid') or terribly mundane ('David'); and the sheer
number of them creates equality. By removing their plots and placing the
names in series, Olsen renders the heroes powerless, and exposes the
limitation of plot; it doesn't allow for alternatives.
©
Thomas White 2005
|