nick-e melvilleSelections and Dissections
Otoliths
$14.95
Reviewed by Stephen Nelson
One of the great joys of reading poetry for me is that initial encounter with the text where eye meets page and explores the way words have been shaped and arranged on a blank canvas. It's a purely visual experience but somehow impacts upon the way we approach and subsequently read the text. Are we looking at a thick fat block of language to be chewed over like a choice steak, or a long thin stream of words rolling down white space, like a dark burn through a snowy field? Or, is something more unusual, something more intriguing going on? What happens when the poet leaps at the idea of first contact and starts to twist and turn and play with language in order to highlight meaning with visual dexterity or through subtle shifts in the shape and material of language? Well, I suppose we get visual language, or, more specifically, concrete poetry.
