Archicembalo by G. C. Waldrep (review)

colorado review 166 Archicembalo, by G. C. Waldrep Tupelo Press, 2009 reviewed by Jason Labbe G. C. Waldrep’s third collection of poems, Archicembalo, borrows its title from an esoteric enharmonic keyboard that has as many as sixty keys per octave. And Waldrep has structured the book after a gamut, which his notes define as “a musical selfinstruction primer that often prefaced volumes of nineteenthcentury American sheet music.” The title and the primer format both stage how detailed and how reaching this book is in subject matter, though in some poems a sense of a singular subject can be tenuous as one sentence, image, or idea spiders into the next. The majority of these poems are in their own way microtonal—capable of unfamiliar notes across narrow intervals, open tunings, and surprising modulations. And the connotations of range that come with the term “gamut” are no accident. As any reader would expect, some poems do involve musicology. But the breadth of materials—the variety of nouns and actions, within poems, from poem to poem—reaches beyond music, while the formal treatment remains consistent throughout. Archicembalo comprises fifty-six prose poems and is written closely and overtly in the vein of innovative prose books such as Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons and Lyn Hejinian’s My Life. But I would argue that this book, unlike its monumental and groundbreaking influences, is not quite “experimental.” Aesthetic innovation of course occurs in degrees, but once an experiment proves successful and is then routinely practiced, it becomes a mode. Waldrep relies on imitation, or working within a distinct mode (with an experimental history), often to the point of homage. He lets Stein’s guidance, especially in the earlier pieces, live out in the open. For example, consider how “What Is a Fugue” begins: “A good dog comes lightly, a good dog comes nightly is pet and is petted and in this way we know the faculty of exuberance.” To borrow Stein’s angular grammar is to borrow her logic, the way her lines think in absurd syllogisms and playful tautologies. Regarding its style, this book is unlikely to offer total discovery, a new method, for those who know its models. Despite its terrific imagination, Archicembalo feels aesthetically familiar. The paratactic prose line is every- 167 Book Notes where these days, and the degree to which Waldrep makes new this increasingly common form is a difficult thing to weigh or measure. For this reader, the value of Waldrep’s project rests in its intelligence, craft, and sheer enjoyability. Erudite and with many flashes of exquisite prose, Waldrep has chosen doing something well over doing something, aesthetically speaking, original. Borrowing freely, he writes with skill and confidence and has me wondering again whether originality is much more than disguising your influences. Archicembalo achieves a surprising and gratifying degree of variation with little disruption to its aesthetic continuity. The book is not divided into sections and progresses fluidly as a single work. Archicembalo hardly drones. The poems vary enough in length, with the shortest pieces being but a few lines and the longest a couple pages. Paratactic and disjunctive poems, the majority, live among linear-moving pieces, such as “What Is a Cantilena,” a narrative, and “What Is a Bass,” a playful shorter poem that moves chronologically through the months of the year, personifying them: “April in her citron, May in his green.” The question mark, disparaged by Stein as “uninteresting ,” is mostly withheld in Archicembalo, but it does make an occasional appearance. Waldrep saves the sincere question for releasing tension or reaching his highest/lowest notes, as in “What Is the Real Answer:” “Do we choose our means of drowning? Or do others choose for us?” Waldrep’s impressive investment in music founds his sensibility: he develops few, if any, themes without variation; his sense of composition pleases the ear and the mind in equal measure. In this gamut, this primer, the relationship between a title and its corresponding poem is dialogic—a sort of call-and-response —rather than descriptive or thematic. Here are some titles picked at random: “Who Is Josquin des Prez,” “What Is a Fugue,” “What Is a Hexachord.” Most of the...