Working through "The Network"

Brian Spears, over at The Rumpus, loves Jena Osman’s new book, The Network, not so much for its poetry, but for the way it challenges the definition of poetry. The book is composed of essayistic conceptual explorations of words and ideas, in a variety of formal modes, none of which “feel” like traditional verse. He writes:

There aren’t many places in this book where I can point to individual poems, and yet I can’t deny the poetic nature of the book as a whole. It doesn’t look like poetry, and at times it doesn’t even sound like poetry, but the connections it makes and the way it envelopes me in language convinces me it can’t be anything but poetry.

A good reminder: sometimes that the poetic element of the text is that which challenges the very poetic-ness of the text. Ah-ha!