Alan Davies Reads & Listens to Jeremy Hoevenaar's Insolvency, Insolvency!

At Entropy, Jeremy Hoevenaar's Insolvency, Insolvency! (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2017) is reviewed by none other than Alan Davies. The book "does tell us how to listen / and when.  If we listen," writes Davies. More:

Only the language of this time / with its street urgency / and silent virtual beep / can tell us what’s happening now.  As Creeley said / you can’t put new wine in old skins.  Many of the words we use / the so-called big words / when cracked open are empty.  Jeremy has looked to find / and found / words that are solid enough to endure.  Such words are often brittle / having been made so by their isolation.  When they stand together we have been given meaning.

Insolvency, Insolvency! is made of ten pieces / each a page to a page and a half long.  The lines are short / the equivalent of about three or four words each.  Jeremy has gotten rid of the parts of words that don’t work / that don’t have exasperated life in them.  Words and fragments of words / phrases and fragments of phrases / sentences incomplete and fragmented – it is these of which the poem’s pieces are made.

The overall expression is therefore truncated / line by line / sentence by sentence / piece by piece.  This is Jeremy’s way of letting us see that nothing can be said completely.  There is a strong compression / especially felt between the two ends of each line.  The meanings have been compressed.  There is no longer time for long-windedness.  The language is metamorphic / schist.  The language affronts itself.

Find the full review at Entropy!