Idiolexicon

The Frequencies -- A Poem(s) by Noah Eli Gordon

What Ted Berrigan did for the sonnet sequence, Noah Eli Gordon has done for the prose poem. He uses the tool of sestinatic refrain to create a world which is already dead within its own present. The Frequencies is an incredible experience, changing rhetoric into break and narrative into collage. Gordon himself becomes receiver, sliding between stations as easily as the eye moves from place to place in a crowded landscape; a quantified and curated everything, again, made to feel its own history in the form of fugue and mortality. The first message transmitted on the telegraph (I learned this at trivia night at a bar last week) was "what hath God wrought?" Gordon's poems take place in the stage after the abomination has sunk in, when it has become common place, when it struggles self-aware with its own relevance and being. The originality of the poems, paired with Gordon's intellectual depth and booming radio voice make for a superb read.

Labels: Recommended Reading