Surface Mutations

Page 11 March–April 2009 National Poetry Month Celebrating surface Mutations David Ray Vance For those who wince at the idea that scientific or technological language might be poetic or who otherwise presume poetry and science make for unnatural bedfellows, Stephanie Strickland’s Zone : Zero is sure to prove both challenging and edifying . In this, her latest collection, Strickland not only treats science as a worthy and inevitable subject matter, but endeavors to actually engage science and its technological outcomes as modes of inquiry for processing ideas. While the results may at moments feel abstruse, they’re certainly not sterile or tedious. Indeed, Strickland’s keen ear and her quirky wit make for a poetry that is both sonically and intellectually beguiling. Ultimately, she strikes a remarkable balance between play and work, between humor and seriousness, between accessibility and complication. Strickland begins Zone : Zero with an epigraph attributed to John Cage: “We forget that we must always return to zero in order to pass from one word to the next.” On the surface, this passage seems straightforward enough. It hearkens to the “zero” in the book’s title and evokes the idea of “zones” by emphasizing the subtle boundaries that separate words. Plus, we can immediately appreciate being called upon to pay close attention to our own processes as readers. This is, after all, a book of poetry. And, of course, we can surmise that in choosing to quote Cage, Strickland is asserting a certain allegiance to experimentation in the arts.All of this is true enough, but then, as is often the case in Strickland’s work, the surface is still only the surface, and what looks simple enough proves rather more complicated (and gratifyingly so) upon further inspection. Consulting the notes at the back of the book, we learn of the quote’s peculiar provenance. Strickland (citing Joan Retallack) explains that the passage is taken from an English translation of a French transcript of an interview conducted with Cage in English. The original recordings were apparently lost before an English transcript was made, so that what survives is merely this trace of the original. Cage himself reported that much of what was attributed to him was wholly unrecognizable.And so we begin Zone : Zero with a heightened sense of uncertainty, aware that we have gained a kind of knowledge, but at the same time put on notice that our knowledge is subject to revision, to redaction, to complete reversal. And here as in the rest of the text, there’s something wholly satisfying about how we learn what we learn. Strickland doesn’t tell us what to think. She doesn’t hand us conclusions. Rather, she presents us with object lessons and leaves us to make of them what we will. To my mind, this is the mark of her generosity as a poet, her willingness to leave the reader to it. That said, while I wouldn’t presume to read into this book anything like a straightforward narrative or even thematic progression, I would point out that the book begins with a sequence of poems carefully designed to query us about the nature of our own senses and perceptions. These pieces, it seems to me, lay the groundwork for what is to come, by again forcing us to reckon with how we know what we know. Still, more than anything that unifies these poems, and the book as a whole for that matter, is Strickland’s witty and often sensuous word play.As a technician, Strickland is at the top of her game. If words were chainsaws, she could juggle a dozen of them without breaking a sweat. Consider the first stanza of “20/21 Vision,” the second poem in the volume: Lost in a cave of warm, wavering stream pumped through projectors overhead, we saw floaters drift, motes eddying, a beam— but more vividly, onscreen, the not quite there body bruised by wind: a heroine; the hero’s bear-skin coat, his bear-grease hair; moving shadows, spooling silver. Strickland packs into this relatively short stanza a stunning array of sonic riffs and chimes. The alliteration and assonance are at once striking and subtly layered, and...