October 22, 2008
Zone : Zero in 1K
Zone : Zero
Stephanie Strickland
Ahsahta Press
2008
But never met this Fellow / Attended, or alone / Without a tighter breathing / And Zero at the Bone— Stephanie Strickland’s Zone is not just a area of restriction; it is one where number and its limits are revealed, where they play. It is one of zero. One and zero alternate in “Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot,” the Web and print poem about how carbon and silicon, and life and computation, interrelate. This poem and “slippingglimpse” are offered on CD and on the pages. It’s a delight to have them to hand as well as to screen. Strickland is master of the hybrid book of leaves and bits, and she shows her mastery here, one foot on earth, one lifted in air. The book offers poems on war and Gödel, a profound series purportedly about absinthe, and a poem made largely of parentheses. Zone : Zero is a strick land, a spare, encompassing, wonderful sector where nature and language twine.
October 22nd, 2008 at 7:07 pm
I’m hoping that readers will either know this or somehow sense it, but the (extremely relevant, in my view) quotation that begins this post is from Emily Dickinson, not from the book of poems being reviewed. And now I’m probably cheating by issuing this amendment to my 1024-character text …