Idiolexicon

Tonight's The Night -- Poems By Catherine Meng

Meng’s poetry is a work of research and collage, originality and history. A biography committed to music, and then back to the page. On the surface, her work seems to exist as fugue, imitative counterpoint, but a deeper meaning and music emerges as the line, breath, and constant refrain of "Tonight’s The Night” carry the movement forward into a place of grand collision.

Meng uses repetition as hook and line, as a bar and scale for language. Bach appears at first seemingly as himself, but soon becomes sign and symbol for Bach the artist and Bach the man, and eventually as fugue itself, a constant reminder of the falsehood inherent in the very fact of Bach.

The repetitive word beat and syllable flow serve to highlight the music and image of her poetry, especially as she moves from an extended breath across several lines, to something more Oppen, a tight snippet of thought stilting the breath and slowing the eye. As the fugue and collage dance and collide into something new, something wonderful happens within the poetry. The new language art becomes self aware, new life self referencing the music and narrative poetry of its own creation.

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