Cinema of the Present

September 15, 2014
Reviewed by Alex Crowley. In this non-linear, self-referential book-length poem, Canadian-born poet and essayist Robertson (Magenta Soul Whip), who currently lives in France, asks, amid a host of queries and interrogations, âWhat do you believe about form?â From the beginning one must be prepared to âmove into the distributive texture of an experimental protocol,â an initially disorienting procession of questions, observations, and images advanced by Robertson. The workâs use of non sequitur is reminiscent of David Markson, as is its invitation to readers to draw their own connections between the poemâs major themesâdescription, memory, prosody, alienation, and gender, among others. Robertsonâs lines, in alternating roman and italic text, flow unceasingly, without overt indications of breaks or stoppages, perhaps providing a response to her question, âHow else do you construct a pause in cognition?â Many lines throughout the work are repeated once later in the poem, though never at any regular interval and always with the text style transposed. This shuffling exposes the banality of déjà vu, how shifting the context changes the nature of expression. Or, as Robertson writes, using the language of epigenetics, âYou are a position effect.â Is her poem, then, a kind of internal dialogue? Perhaps, and, if this is the case, it underlines her question, âwhat is the subject but a stitching?â Addressing the selfâs perpetual conflict over which desires take prominence (âThereâs no logic to what organisms demandâ), Robertson even wonders, âTo whom do you speak?âOne can with more certainty call Robertsonâs poem a magnificent testament to the eroticism of thought, one where âthe enjoyable gland also dribbles its politics.â The specific gland to which she is referring remains obscure, but thatâs partly the point: sheâs hinting at the sexual while keeping the door open to an exploration of the physical body more generally. In this way, her primary concerns find their expression in tones and textures that are quintessentially Robertsonian and reveal how desire is intimately entwined with the selfâs coming into being. âThe way you practice emergence,â she declares, âis through longing.â So, if the irrationality of tension within the self demands a synthesis, then, âour new skin would be prosodicâthat is, both esoteric and practical.â Amid all this âbrutality of descriptionââwhich, for Robertson, âis the traversal of this infinitely futile yet fundamental and continuous space called the presentââthe âcinema of the presentâ becomes that ever-passing surface of time, the sheen of a moment in the description of that moment: âBy means of description, a whole profound mass of time became your milieu.â A social environment thus enlarged serves one of Robertsonâs explicit goals, that âFeminism wants to expand the sensorium.âThis bookâwhich will feature four different back covers designed by artists Hadley + Maxwell, emphasizing its status as an objet dâartâdefies review, instead demanding engagement, conversation, and multiple rereads. It may not be a great place to start for newcomers to Robertsonâs work, but fans or those who simply relish getting lost in a sea of thought will discover almost infinite depths: âIf you speak in this imaginary structure, itâs because other choices felt limiting.â