ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Lynn McGee has poems forthcoming in Sugar House Review, The Night Heron Barks, Atticus Review and Atlanta Review. She is the author of the poetry collections Tracks (Broadstone Books, 2019) and Sober Cooking (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2016) as well as two award-winning poetry chapbooks: Heirloom Bulldog and Bonanza. (www.lynnmcgee.com).
Micro-Review of Light Experiments by Madeleine Barnes
Light Experiments
by Madeleine Barnes
Porkbelly Press, 2018
Light Experiments, a limited-edition chapbook by Madeleine Barnes (Porkbelly Press, 2018) is hand-bound with linen thread, and hand-waxed with beeswax. You will want to close your eyes and run your fingers over the hand-torn cover with its debossed lettering — they prepare the reader to forego usual ways of seeing. The book opens with a Gwendolyn Brooks quote: “Books are meat and medicine/and flame and light and flower/steel, stitch, cloud and clout,/and drumbeats on the air.” The exhilarating roll-out that follows includes nine double-page, high-contrast photographic spreads that are technically black-and-white, though I’m betting if my eyes had as many cones as a bird’s, I would see a new palette altogether — such is the book’s ability to suggest. The dimensions of Light Experiments are about those of a postcard, but its visual spreads open to a size surpassing the sum of its parts. “The work focuses on bodily abstractions and the feeling of being ‘split’ from oneself, one’s surroundings, and even one’s sense of identity,” Barnes writes in her artist statement. She also says the chapbook “constructs an experience that will be different for every viewer,” and I agree, though I also think viewers will share the joy of being startled and coaxed to non-linear heights of narrative as they turn the pages of Light Experiments. For me this brought associations — my brain tosses up words like “fallopian tube,” “skull” and “portal.” I also enjoyed the sense of reverbing with the book’s emotional subtext: elation, release and risk. I leave Light Experiments open on my desk because I like the energy it throws out. It’s good to accept invitations of light, and to enjoy the experiments flashing unexpectedly, around us.
Visit Madeleine Barnes's Website
Visit Porkbelly Press' Website
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
