Fault Tree by Kathryn L. Pringle (review)

As the winner of the 2011 Omnidawn First/Second Book Contest, Kathryn L. Pringle follows her 2009 release, Right New Biology (Factory School), with a haunting collection of poems that examines relationship and memory through the interrupted voice of a vulnerable soldier while evaluating science and applying logic and illogic to the passage of time.

Pringle begins the collection by introducing theories of Einstein and defining fault tree analysis (fta), in which Boolean logic is used to analyze engineering, safety, and—in Pringle’s case—the scientific ticking of the clock. In an introduction to the three themed “books” dividing the book-length poem of Fault Tree, the poet employs an apostrophe, a forewarning that directly addresses the reader:

once the moment came it was too late to go back to the moments before it. that’s the problem with time. we can’t control it.

By examining the mechanics of time and our lack of manipulation over its passage, Pringle reveals the mental struggle of losing one’s self in the moment, in the inability to freeze-frame the here and now. This is exemplified in “There Through Time”:

. . . if the placement of clocks takes place prior to the synchronization of clocks then time cannot be in agreement

Time, the poem suggests, is only what we individually perceive it to be. It is an impression, an idea that is not definable or tangible, that cannot be aligned with another’s perception. “There Through Time” sees time as simultaneously infinite and nonexistent, observed for existing in the past and anticipating the future, but never present or within reach. Pringle reflects this concept by using white space strategically, balancing the featherweight words across the page to add a stop-motion quality to the work. Single lines, sometimes single words, strike against the white backdrop like a ticking second hand maintains staccato beats, edging each line toward the next and barely slowing to acknowledge the present, thus reflecting what came before and what will come in the next line.

By examining time—its ominous presence, its convoluted significance—the poet struggles with what cannot be seen, touched, or otherwise acknowledged, except time’s absence. Pringle’s speaker has faith in the perception of what was and what will be, but not of what exists in the precise moment, for “you won’t see it / hanging there.”

Like time, voices shift and sway; in Fault Tree, Pringle calls upon her father’s experiences in World War ii to inspect the relationship between time and war:

. . . the pacing was all wrong for death we know it will not come until it comes

A timepiece reveals nothing of one’s existence. As days bleed into nights with dull repetition, the soldier’s voice can no longer distinguish what was wartime and what others may view as peacetime. When asked about the experience, the speaker replies: “which one // all is war / we haven’t not had one.” As in other poems in Fault Tree, the speaker reflects on the nonexistent lines between past, present, and future. War has no specific start or end. Time exists only in relation to not existing in a present tense; just as Pringle’s speaker declares earlier in the collection, “time comprehension goes unseen” because “it does / not happen.”

Despite their seemingly esoteric philosophies of science, space, and time, these poems are inviting and accessible for their simple diction, precise imagery, and equal weight of words to space—each line’s half-breath allows a simple pause before evaporating into the next moment. Like the space-time continuum, Pringle’s spatial dimensions in stanzaic arrangement mirror the examination of time and memory. Because she has arranged most of her poems in a series of quick single lines, Pringle’s occasional use of more expected forms catches both the reader’s and the speaker’s attention. The fifteenth couplet of a section within the Book 3 series, for instance, highlights the rigid demands and structure of wartime:

this is in couplets. a love poem with blood...