Idiolexicon

Do The Math - Poems by Emily Galvin

Do The Math is a book of presence, of the separation between the body and the self in any given moment, in any unit of time. A book that sets limits and seeks differentials within it. In her work, Galvin plays wonderfully with the absurdity inherent in poetry, in the assuming of persona and the stagecraft of lyric and language.

Wittgenstein said, to paraphrase, that the limits of our language are the limits of our reality. In her work, Galvin builds tiny universes of intricately stacked language, set between two points of set time, and allows them to play out. As the work increases, the mathematical and linguistic limits begin to be reached, but simultaneously unravel.

I don't know enough theater to say if Galvin borrows from Beckett, Brecht or Artaud, but I know enough poetics to speculate on the influence of Stein's architecture and Creeley's breath construction to her work. Galvin plays with communication, challenging our assumption of the line and the units of words as we turn every break. Grammar begins to separate from context, and voices begin to speak past each other, moving into new and parallel worlds of language.

Language within Do The Math builds on itself while dividing at the same time, a wonderful game of language and math, a string theory verse, each unit spinning off and colliding and creating. A great read.

Labels: Recommended Reading