Fieldnotes
Mark Weiss
96 pages perfectbound
$11.00
ISBN 1-881523-04-7
In the world of these poems the ground is never steady. There is the sense at every moment that the poet’s attention may turn, to
incorporate the unexpected detail, the wayward reflection, and thus transform our reading of the whole. By drawing on a variety
of poetic techniques, Weiss grants none sovereignty; discernible in the mix are an Objectivist-like precision for registering the
external world, a receptivity to chance events, occasional intimate confessions, nuanced repetitions, even snippets of nature poetry.
Rather, these are works of assemblage, of delicate tensions and juxtapositions, the disparate parts ringing sympathetically.
To consider the poems as artifacts implies a process of discovery, unearthing not only man-made objects but hidden
connections—less to the past, in this case, than between self and world as negotiated through language. The rhythm of the interval
rules here, the possibility that the poem may find new openings with each breath. These openings, Weiss suggests, are all about
us but they must be approached with care, for an excess of purpose may easily blind us to them.
It is the junctures he seeks with these poems, that space in which the wonder occurs.” hat it has always done.
- Sulfur