Frédéric Forte - poems “staged” on the page. A simple vertical line of 3 inches separates what Forte calls the stage and the wings. The poet explores the potential of this form with multiple typographic games, calling on different registers of the language, different poetic techniques and, in the second part of the book, by “fixating as minute-operas” 55 existing poetic forms

Frédéric Forte, Minute-Operas. Trans. by Daniel Levin Becker, Ian Monk, Michelle Noteboom, and Jean-Jacques Poucel. Burning Deck, 2015.

Frédéric Forte’s Minute-Operas are poems “staged” on the page. A simple vertical line of 3 inches separates what Forte calls the stage and the wings. The poet explores the potential of this form with multiple typographic games, calling on different registers of the language, different poetic techniques and, in the second part of the book, by “fixating as minute-operas” 55 existing poetic forms (come out of various poetic traditions or more recently invented by Oulipo, the famous French “Workshop for potential literature.”)

The poems of Minute-Operas also constitute, in their cryptic way, a journal of the poet’s life during the period of composition (2001-2002): his love life, the loss of his father…

It was shortly after the publication of this book, in 2005, that Frédéric Forte was elected a member of the Oulipo.

“A book as intriguing (by its staging of typographic variations) as it is invigorating (in its micro-narratives).”
—Emmanuel Laugier, Le Matricule des Anges n°67 (octobre 2005)

“Extraordinary inventiveness…funny, original, brilliant”
—Jean-Michel Espitallier, Caisse à Outils: Un panorama de la poésie française aujourd’hui (Pocket, 2006)

Frédéric Forte was born in Toulouse, France, in 1973, and is a member opf the Oulipo since 2005. The most recent of his seventeen poetry collections are Une collecte (Théâtre Typographique, 2009), Re- (Nous, 2012) and 33 sonnets plats (Éditions de l'Attente, 2012).

He has translated into French the American poet Michelle Noteboom and, with Bénédicte Vilgrain, the German poet and Oulipian Oskar Pastior. He lives in Paris, where (among other things) he runs the blog poète-public.

In English: Seven String Quartets has appeared from La Presse fall 2014.

As the title of Frédéric Forte's collection (can) suggest, the 'minute-operas' presented here are small and short, the minute applicable both to their (limited) temporal as well as spatial dimensions. They are 'operas' (also) in the traditional-original sense of the word: simply 'works' -- yet even as these texts are not set to music they are more than merely words (though also not libretti, in the familiar form). The stage for these performance-pieces remains the page -- but, through a creative use of typography and presentation, Forte shows how much one can achieve in two dimensions.
       Forte is a member of the Oulipo -- the 'workshop of potential literature' -- so the word- and structure- (and strictures-)play in everything from the title onwards comes as no surprise. This volume is presented in two parts -- 'phases', he calls them -- , the first simply (if one can put it that way ...) 'minute-operas', the second applying a wide variety of (mainly) Oulipian forms to the individual pieces (with a 'detailed index' offering a summary definition of each particular applied form).
       Practically each 'minute-opera' has a three-inch vertical line as a major element, separating elements of the text -- what's on 'stage' and what's in the 'wings', Forte suggests, but the reduction and separation is rarely quite that simple. What's to the left of the line, usually in smaller print, isn't merely marginalia or stage-directions; what's to the right hardly just the action, so to speak. Complicating matters, the line is not always simply a complete barrier: there are pieces where the text runs over it as if it weren't there, while elsewhere the line isn't straight. Among the most visually beautiful is a poem in which there is not just the familiar line on the left side of the page, but four, at ninety-degree angles, forming a box, in the top left outside corner the text: "use / the void"; in the bottom right outside corner: "the void / used". Another presents the 'skeleton' of an onzina (a 'level-11 quenina, an eleven-by-eleven poem represented (except for some words in the wings) entirely graphically/visually.
       It's almost pointless to present an example because, as with so much Oulipo work, a great deal of the point is the variations on the theme, but this (in the French original, and a rare one with hand-drawn elements) is as good an example as any:

       As to the texts, these do tend to be elusive (and, of course, allusive ...) and often very succinct. Where there is elaboration, it is often in the form of repetition -- including, in several cases, in acrostic form (including a very impressive -- because large-scale -- sexanagrammatina).
       An index defines and explains (more or less) the different 'fixed forms' Forte uses in each of the phase-two pieces, an entry typically reading:
Heterogram, 103. Invented by Georges Perec. The letters chosen by the poet (the ten most frequently used in the French alphabet, plus one) cannot be used again before the whole series is completed.
       Some are much more simple/obvious:
French sonnet, 101. Where to begin ?
       And even this space is used for occasional commentary:
Haiku, 71. Needs no introduction. Unlike the chant royal the minute-opera is a bit baggy for it.
       Forte's remarkable variations -- 55 of them -- range from some of these traditional poetic forms (though even the haiku becomes something quite extraordinary in its visual presentation) through all sorts of Oulipian games. There's even a traditional Algol poem -- following Noël Arnaud's 1968 Poèmes Algol, "using only the limited vocabulary of the computer language Algol".
       Minute-Operas is a beautiful, fascinating, puzzling collection. These are very much visual texts: the words count and matter (and, indeed, there's a lot not so much hidden but tied into them, in Forte's use of Oulipian forms and constraints), but the greater rewards are in the creative interplay between (graphic) form and content. The texts, certainly, aren't for the most part immediately very approachable, but the presentation makes them all at least intriguing -- and draws the reader in, to figure out what's going on here.
       Arguably, Minute-Operas functions much like (musical) opera, in that it can appeal even to the uninitiated on a surface level, even as it frustrates in its less accessible deeper elements. The sheer spectacle, however, impresses enough at least to warrant that first look -- many of the pages are practically wall-ready works of art, and the book can be enjoyed entirely on a visual level, almost ignoring the text -- while there's so much behind it that the effort of second (and further) looks and closer readings is well-rewarded, too. - M.A.Orthofer




First up from the American Literary Translators Association, 2016 National Translation Awards longlist for Poetry (geez that’s a mouthful), is Minute-Operas by Frédéric Forte (Translated from the French by Daniel Levin Becker, Ian Monk, Michelle Noteboom & Jean-Jacques Poucel).

Stepping into Frédéric Forte’s work is like stepping into a vast sparse gallery space, open space around you, take time to ponder what your eye has been drawn towards. Broken into two sections, “Phase one – January – October 2001” and “Phase two – February – December 2002”. Each section containing 55 “poems” or creations.

Each poem is “Staged” on the page, where a “simple vertical line of 3 inches (I measured the line thinking it would more likely to be in centimetres, but inches it was, I wonder if this is part of the translation or a US audience too?) separates, what Forte calls the stage and the wings”. Typographically the word creations then perform on this stage created on each page. It is probably best to cite an example.

This example showing the passing of time, the polar opposites of marking off weeks but stating that during a “poem’s construction you never count your days”, ageing and creation (in the wings) whilst the seconds pass on the stage. Complexity all on a single page. To quote the ‘Preface” from “The End of Oulipo? An attempt to exhaust a movement” by Lauren Elkin and Scott Esosito;

The concept of potential literature is founded on a paradoxical principle: that through the use of a formal constraint the writer’s creative energy is liberated. The work which results may be “complete” in itself, but it will gesture at all the other work that could potentially be generated using that constraint.

The poem I have used as an example doesn’t actually fall into the Oulipian section of Frédéric Forte’s work, which in fact comes in phase two, but the concept of the paradox and liberation are stunningly obvious.

This is a collection that forces you to pause, as if in an art gallery, to observe, linger, absorb, reflect before moving on, each poem an artwork in its own right, a creation that can work on numerous levels, artistically, literary, poetically, theatrically or even structurally.

Phase two’s poems come with a “Detailed index of fixed forms” where the poem uses existing poetic forms, either traditional or invented by the Oulipo. Another example for you;

Here the detailed index explains that the poem is a “Quintina. Level-5 quenina. In (central pillar of a house [the title of the poem]) the permutation operates on punctuation marks.” Permutations boundless in this example, I‘ll leave it for you to ponder.

This book is not only a feat of typographical wonder, to even contemplate the translation that would have been required, is a feat in itself. For example, the oulipo ‘heterogram’ “invented by Georges Perec. The letters chosen by the poet (the ten most frequently used in the French alphabet, plus one) cannot be used again before the whole series is completed. In the poem ‘(whistle statue II)’ the letters “SILENTBAROU” go through various iterations as words (eg. Silent Bar: our tale is….) eleven times until they end with the words “burial stone”. How on earth did this originally appear in French and how did the translator make it coherent in English? I’m still astounded, initially upon reading the poem, again when taking my notes, and now when attempting to explain it.

The cover of the book tells us that the content of the poems “also constitute, in their cryptic way, a journal of the poet’s life during the period of composition (2001-2002): his love life, the loss of his father…” unfortunately this depth was something that was personally lost in the translation. Whilst the word games, and cryptic style was extremely impressive, the content, as a cohesive whole, seemed to fall by the wayside.

Phase two of the book containing fifty-five word games for you to explore slowly, wonder upon, stretch your limits, refer to the index and back to the poem, research, ponder. An absolute marvel of potential literature. The first fifty-five poems more structured within the space confines, created by the poet, or simply the limits of the page, but still wonderfully rich and detailed in their construction.

A collection that I think would not be out of place in an art gallery. Illuminating and one I will revisit often, if simply just to be stunned at the creation involved.

In a nut shell this is a book I can’t adequately review, here’s what others have said….if that helps…

“A book as intriguing (by its staging of typographic variations) as it is invigorating (in its micro-narratives).” —Emmanuel Laugier, Le Matricule des Anges n°67 (octobre 2005)

“Extraordinary inventiveness…funny, original, brilliant” —Jean-Michel Espitallier, Caisse à Outils: Un panorama de la poésie française aujourd’hui (Pocket, 2006)

“positively acrobatic, even balletic” – ALTA Blog

How about you buy a copy and see for yourself? I can guarantee literary lovers, Oulipo readers and poetry aficionados will not be disappointed. - messybooker.wordpress.com/2016/09/02/minute-operas-frederic-forte-translated-by-daniel-levin-becker-ian-monk-michelle-noteboom-jean-jacques-poucel/

“Quand le temps décide répète” – an interview with Frédéric Forte by SJ Fowler.
It is rather apt, or rather remiss, that for the fiftieth edition of Maintenant we present our first French poet. The first of many no doubt. It is all the more appropriate, given our dictum, that our first French subject is the youngest, and 35th, member of Oulipo. As the most contemporary representative of that legendary group of writers and poets, it goes without saying Frédéric Forte is an adroit, inventive and certain presence in the ever-lively and rich French poetry scene. We are extremely pleased to mark our half-century featuring a poet who epitomises our commitment to urbane, intelligent and important poetry which is still evolving into its own distinguished completion.

3:AM: Let us begin with a discussion of your involvement with Oulipo. How did you become to be a member of the group?
Frédéric Forte: I discovered modern poetry by reading Raymond Queneau (I was around 24 y.o.). I had heard of Oulipo before but this renewed my interest for it: I read Roubaud, etc. (and also a lot of non-Oulipian contemporary poetry).
When I decided 2 years later to ‘seriously’ become a poet, I began naturally to work on more largely formalist texts. I felt this was my way to be a writer. The Oulipo represented an intellectual family of people thinking the same way as I was. So after that, I sent my works to Oulipian poets like Jacques Roubaud, Jacques Jouet and Michelle Grangaud. That’s how the Oulipo became aware of my existence. In 2002, I was invited to a monthly reunion. There, I met the English and Oulipian poet Ian Monk and we wrote together a bilingual book named N/S. And in 2005, after I published Opéras-minute, the group decided to cooptate me as its 35th member.
3:AM: Could you detail the content of your work with Ian Monk?
FF: N/S is a book made of 8-lines bilingual poems (4 lines in French, 4 in English). The idea was to cross formally both languages in all the ways possible. For an 8-lines poem, there are 70 combinations — from EEEEFFFF to the contrary (FFFFEEEE) going by FEFEFEFE for example (E is for English and F for French of course). There’s no rhyme or fixed meters involved in the process.
The title means “North / South” or “Nord / Sud” because Ian Monk lives in Lille (north of France) and I was living at the time in my hometown, Toulouse (in the South-West).
Ian and I sent 4 lines, at a time, to each other by e-mail in order to complete the poem. Once we completed the first 70 poems, we did it again in “reverse mode” and then Ian translated the whole work in mirror. Finally the book contains 280 poems (140 originals and their translations).
3:AM: Has Jacques Roubaud proved a significant influence upon you as you have come to know him?
FF: As I said I first discovered Roubaud’s work when I was looking for Oulipian books, after the ‘Queneau trigger’. And it completely turned upside down my conception of poetry. I found out that a poem could be at the same time abstact and lyrical, intimate and formal, playful and deep, a very unique kind of conceptual object. After the first shocks that have been ” ” (which means actually ‘belongs to’ in maths) or “Quelque chose noir” I read everything of his and nothing made me change my mind on the importance of his work. I think Roubaud is the only ‘genius’ that I ever met and also a very kind man, discrete, respectful and not trying to impose his views to the others. He is a master I freely chose but absolutely not a guru!
3:AM: What methodologies do you pursue in your work that might be recognisable to those who are familiar with Oulipo through the work of Perec, Roubaud, Mathews etc…?
FF: Each Oulipian has his own approach of writing and his own methodologies. For my part, I mostly dedicate my efforts to use fixed forms and invent some new ones… In a way, it’s a ‘tradition’ in the Oulipo history…
3:AM: What are some of the new forms you have invented in writing your poetry?
FF: I haven’t invented very many actually… Let’s say: the ‘opéras-minute’ (a kind of spatial meta-fixed form that may fix other forms!), the book should be translated soon and published (if everything goes well) by Burning Deck in 2 or 3 years… ; recently I began to write long prose poems called ’99 preparatory notes to…’ where I try to ‘think’ (poetically) about something (the blue of the sky, the impossible or the action of slowing down, for example). This form is very useful when a review asks you for a text: “What is the subject? Aquatic life? Ok, I’m gonna write ’99 preparatory note to the aquatic life!”
Most of the time I work on older forms (sonnet, sestina, etc…) and I try and find a way to renew them…
3:AM: While many philosophically justified movements in poetry seem to have their day and then die away (the nouveau roman an example, an interesting discussion in itself and its relationship to Oulipo), aping the ‘seasonal’ nature of philosophy, it seems the Oulipo movement, in poets like yourself, is renewed, renewable even and still a vital presence in French poetry. Do you think this is true? If so, why?
FF: I would say first that the Oulipo is not a ‘movement’, it’s a group of people, not trying to persuade they’re good and the others are bad, but just working, generations after generations, on the potentialities of literature. This maybe could plainly explain the longevity of the group.
I don’t know if the Oulipo is ‘vital’ for French poetry, maybe it would be pretentious for me, as an Oulipian, to say it. All I know is: it’s alive and it’s part of the thing. The Oulipian logic brings poetry in new, different directions (as others approaches do in their own ways). The important point is to keep poetry as diverse and alive as possible.
3:AM: You have translated English texts into French, do you engage in a lot of translation work?
FF: Not really. I’ve done (along with the poet Bénédicte Vilgrain) an ‘Oulipian’ translation from the German of Oskar Pastior’s anagram-poems. I have also translated Uncaged, prose poems by Michelle Noteboom (who is an American poet, and my partner). To have the author at home helped me a lot! And I will do it again soon, I hope. But, really, I consider the translation of poetry as a poetic act itself. To translate a text is a wonderful way to deeply know it and it’s also a way to explore new territories for your own poetry.
3:AM: You worked as a bookseller, do you consider this your profession? Does it support your poetry?
FF: I love bookshops, I’ve got a lot of friends working as booksellers but this is not my profession. It used to be a job. And in a way, a difficult job for a poet who could see every day that a lot of readers are not curious about poetry at all.
For now, I have the incredible chance, to earn money doing what I love. Not with the book sales of course but doing residencies, public readings and workshops. It’s a luxury. And I don’t know how long it will last.
3:AM: Do you think France as a nation is producing the talent in poetry to match it’s immense poetic history?
FF: Yes! Not because of me of course. But I think the poetry production is vivid, with a lot of authors exploring language in many directions, and great (small) presses to publish them.
3:AM: Are there defined movements and styles in poetry emerging from the next generation of poets? Are there young poets coming to the fore whom you admire?
FF: I don’t really see ‘defined movements’ emerging at this time. But maybe I don’t clearly see. They are many ‘styles’, many directions, as I said, explored by French poets. Too many to detail them here. There’s an excellent book about it if you’re interested by the subject : Caisse à outils by Jean-Michel Espitallier (“a panorama of today’s french poetry”).
I like a lot of ‘young’ (or less young) poets. A few names : Eric Suchère, Anne Parian, Marie-Louise Chapelle, Sébastien Smirou, Cécile Mainardi…
3:AM: Is there a difference in the culture of poetry (it’s nature, the attention it’s given etc…) between those writing in Paris and elsewhere in France? Does each city, and each individual region produce definitively different work, while generalising of course?
FF: You know that France is a ‘jacobin’ country, very centralized. I would say Paris attracts a lot of artists, like a magnet. I was born in Toulouse and if I decided to move in Paris quite recently it’s of course because of my Oulipo membership but also because so many things occur in Paris that don’t exist elsewhere in France. Nevertheless, many great poets live in other French cities. And, for the poetry I like, I don’t see clear distinctions between Parisian and non-Parisian poets.
It’s true, another kind of ‘regional’ poetry also exists, I would say, in a very reductive way, ‘countryside poetry’. But I’m not really aware of it… and not interested in (shame on me).
Photo copyright : © Hermance Triay






Frédéric Forte, Seven String Quartets. La Presse, 2014.

Frédéric Forte's fleeting poems borrow the structure and arrangement of the string quartet, but rather than performing in concert, these poems keep tuning their instruments, fidgeting and fussing, sighing and shrugging, until they quietly exit the stage. Throughout, one is swept along by what turns out to be a surprisingly subtle, finely nuanced performance.                   

John Henry Ryskamp - Throwing together patches of history, art theory, literary essay, cultural criticism, memoir, legal briefs, letters from the author to his editor, quotes from The Brothers Karamazov, two or three pages of actual story, and reams and reams of explication and justification of its own style and structure, 'Nature Studies', bills itself as the beginning of twenty-first-century art. Instead, what it ends up being is an accidental parody of postmodernism

John Henry Ryskamp, Nature Studies, Fiction Collective 2, 1998.


With affinities to the 1980s phenomenon of appropriation art, journalist and critic Ryskamp puts himself into his novel, much as Cindy Sherman poses in her own photography. Layered upon musings of hunting patterns of eagles and the geographical makeup of the Midwest are metatextual reflections on Crime and Punishment and Jane Eyre, among other books. The text proceeds at blender speed, dizzily mixing together famous names and quotes, such as those by Einstein, Ryskamp's "grandfather" and Bartok, who both in turn quote Wittgenstein and Nietzsche. Ryskamp leavens his pastiche with numerous reflections about his own role in the dawning of modernism (one favorite method is to relate his "dreams," in which he encounters Freud, Picasso and others), though the best sections are tongue-in-cheek descriptions of how the novel happens to be created from additions made to two essays, one on AZT and one on the New Bill of Rights. Overall, the book resembles the sort of nightmare one imagines having after reading too many issues of Art Forum successively. One suspects that the novel's audience will be limited to critics who will recognize obscure references to avant-garde esoterica. - Publishers Weekly


The poop sheet tells us that Ryskamp is a lawyer by trade which becomes more apparent as we drag ourselves through this trial by fire. Nature Studies is a riot --- not a riot ha-ha, unfortunately, but a riot of name-dropping and literary and classical references thrown in everywhere to let you know that the author has read everything, and is willing to upchuck it before us, before lunch, like the puppy's breakfast.
In the 75 pages we managed to get through there were loud and pesky references to Virginia Woolf, Einstein, Ho Chin Min, Baudelaire, Motherwell, Courbet, Mondrian, Christ, Martha Graham, Verlaine, Constable, Byron, Tagore, Sal Mineo, Montgomery Clift, Rilke, Jung, Freud, Joyce, Duchamp --- you name it. Every now and again, a tiny scintilla of wit would pop up, 
One might say, It was about time, rather as Derrida replied when asked, what does deconstruction do? "It depends."
But more often than not, this is a long, long Porkies for neo-intellectuals, vide: 
In fact, I should say that, intellectually speaking, the culture is "now" [now being the date of publication of the book you are reading] living in about the year 2038. Curious, ain't it? And which year are YOU living in, cher lecteur? [How the tiresome little weasel does torment his reader!!]
[Note: Brackets are courtesy of the author, not this reviewer: although the sentiments expressed are not too far distant from my own.]It makes one wonder how the editors of FC2 made it through this without going bonkers. One of them is, incidentally, dragged in on page 55: 
"Even your editor at FC2, Curt White, complains about it." So I am writing here (and you will see this in the manuscript of the book): Shut up.
The very same Curt White turns out to be not at all Shut Up but rather the composer of a most doubtful blurb featured at the top of the front cover comparing Nature Studies to Tristram Shandy which got us to wondering which Tristram Shandy they had in mind --- certainly not the funny one we read in college. Maybe he had another Stearne in mind --- one, more likely, more to his taste (with a few less vowels) named Howard.
A brief time in the arms of Nature Studies is not unlike being on a 42-day cruise from Bermuda to Borneo spending the meals trapped at the dinner table next to that big bore who can't quite figure out why all the rest of us seem so eager to abandon ship somewhere near the Sargasso Sea. - RR Doister


Throwing together patches of history, art theory, literary essay, cultural criticism, memoir, legal briefs, letters from the author to his editor, quotes from The Brothers Karamazov, two or three pages of actual story, and reams and reams of explication and justification of its own style and structure, John Henry Ryskamp’s debut novel, Nature Studies, bills itself as the beginning of twenty-first-century art. Instead, what it ends up being is an accidental parody of postmodernism, an inbred cousin to the works of Richard Grossman, William Vollmann, David Foster Wallace, and Theresa Cha.

Like those writers, Ryskamp plays with form, invents impossible combinations of events, warps time, and exploits high and low culture. But the novel reads more like Forrest Gump as written by Woody Allen’s “Irish Genius” Sean O’Shawn than like The Book of Lazarus or You Bright and Risen Angels. Here we have Ryskamp joking with Einstein, giving advice to Mondrian, fishing with Bartók, etc. It gets old fast.

Using postmodernism to distract the reader from the novel’s vast emptiness, Ryskamp employs every single literary trick he can think of, liberally stealing from Joyce, Calvino, Borges, Pynchon, and anyone else in his endless repertoire of references. At the same time, he mocks the very writers who influence him, accusing the best of them of “senseless virtuosity.”

Take a gander at this: “Actually the failure begins not at the Wake, but rather in Ulysses. That is why we begin to see that Joyce is a talent in search of a reason, that he runs everything into the ground, that he goes on endlessly and has no plot, that like Shakespeare he cannot tell a story (Shakespeare can’t spell either) and is too fond of the sound of his own voice.” He then goes on to “savage” Proust for his aimlessness. Either Ryskamp is too myopic to see that he’s damning his own faults—which is unlikely considering how self-conscious he is—or else he’s being ironic, in which case he’s trying to fool us into equating Nature Studies with other “senselessly virtuousic” works. I doubt anybody’s going to fall for it.

If it bears mentioning at all, the story buried in Nature Studies concerns a young boy who’s kidnapped and killed by an eagle, but you can find a more succinct and readable version of that story on the book’s back cover.

The only really enjoyable sections of Nature Studies are the ecological, legal, and political diatribes—which Ryskamp admits, in a lengthy discussion of the book’s composition and editing process, were added to fatten the book, at the request of his editor, Curtis White (who also contributes an absurdly hyperbolic blurb to the book’s cover). They culminate in a brief Vollmann-esque interview with a homeless man near the end of the book—clearly just a transcript, but incredibly moving nonetheless. So even though Ryskamp comes off as a self-parodying blowhard most of the time, at least his political heart is in the right place. Too bad his aesthetics aren’t. —David Wiley

John Henry Ryskamp's book, Nature Studies, is not without promise. On the whole Ryskamp writes well and often even elegantly, and he has many clever things to say. One goes along with him at first, learning about eagles (in some striking scenes) and the Big Star Lake area of Michigan. One even allows him his discursive digressions as he brings in Einstein and Gödel and Freud and many other famous souls. With time though the joke and jokes wear thin, the knowing asides too often preening (and often expressing foolish notions and opinions), the story too absent.
       Ryskamp is not a stupid man. And he writes well enough to have the makings of a decent author. But this novel is too playful, without either payoff or enough fun to make the effort worthwhile. After a while (and not too long a while) his mutterings and meanderings wear the reader down. If there were any kind of point to this shambles of a novel Ryskamp might be forgiven (we don't necessarily need a story, but we need something for our effort .....). As is, the book -- though sometimes clever (and often not) and written in a solid style -- is a disappointment.
       We're fans of FC2 (the Illinois State University publisher, Fiction Collective 2), and we understand that they might want to publish this as the interesting experiment than it almost is. Nevertheless, we cannot, in good conscience, recommend the book to any but those interested in modern, "experimental" fiction. Ryskamp's style and ideas have some redeeming qualities -- but not enough. - The Complete Review

Mara Beller - Using extensive archival research, Beller shows how Bohr and others marketed their views, misrepresenting and dismissing their opponents as "unreasonable" and championing their own not always coherent or well-supported position as "inevitable"

Mara Beller, Quantum Dialogue. University of Chicago Press, 1999.


"Science is rooted in conversations," wrote Werner Heisenberg, one of the twentieth century's great physicists. In Quantum Dialogue, Mara Beller shows that science is rooted not just in conversation but in disagreement, doubt, and uncertainty. She argues that it is precisely this culture of dialogue and controversy within the scientific community that fuels creativity.
Beller draws her argument from her radical new reading of the history of the quantum revolution, especially the development of the Copenhagen interpretation. One of several competing approaches, this version succeeded largely due to the rhetorical skills of Niels Bohr and his colleagues. Using extensive archival research, Beller shows how Bohr and others marketed their views, misrepresenting and dismissing their opponents as "unreasonable" and championing their own not always coherent or well-supported position as "inevitable."
Quantum Dialogue, winner of the 1999 Morris D. Forkosch Prize of the Journal of the History of Ideas, will fascinate everyone interested in how stories of "scientific revolutions" are constructed and "scientific consensus" achieved.


"This a very impressive book: a ‘must-read’ for readers of this journal interested in thehistory of quantum physics. (...) To sum up: this is an excellent, though controversial, book. Future work on the early history of quantum theory, and especially on the history of the Copenhagen interpretation, starts here." - Jeremy Butterfield

"The book is a bold attempt to analyse carefully the complex process by which the insights and predilections of individuals contributed to the emergence of a consensus. Of course, one may not agree with all the conclusions. Nevertheless, Quantum Dialogue is an intellectually stimulating piece of work, energised by a distinct point of view that should appeal to physicists and philosophers alike." - Dipankar Home

"Hers is a complex story, written for experts, yet full of observations that will enlighten the determined reader. (...) (I)t demands courage from the uninstructed, but promises rewards in proportion to the effort." - Brian Pippard


Creativity is inherently elusive. In science, its definition is beset by an intriguing interplay between the individual and the group. This challenge is taken up in Mara Beller's book with regard to the early development of quantum mechanics (QM), and in particular the evolution of QM's so-called "Copenhagen interpretation" by Niels Bohr and his colleagues.
The book is a bold attempt to analyse carefully the complex process by which the insights and predilections of individuals contributed to the emergence of a consensus. Of course, one may not agree with all the conclusions. Nevertheless, Quantum Dialogue is an intellectually stimulating piece of work, energised by a distinct point of view that should appeal to physicists and philosophers alike.
The central theme is what Beller calls "dialogical flux": a dialectical process of "creative" conversations seeking to resolve tension between conflicting approaches by synthesis. That the evolution of the Copenhagen interpretation was agitated by such a flux of dialogues is brought out emphatically. The account results from a painstaking, comprehensive study of primary sources: correspondence, notebooks and, of course, original scientific papers.
The first seven chapters roughly cover the period 1925-35, during which both matrix and wave-mechanical versions of QM, though conceived independently, turned out to be equivalent representations giving rise to Heisenberg's uncertainty relation and Bohr's complementarity. Beller argues that the uncertainty relation and complementarity appeared not so much because of a prior commitment either to indeterminism or positivism, but rather as a response to Schrodinger's wave mechanics and to ensure consistency with some crucial experiments. Complementarity then sparked off the Bohr-Einstein debates, which culminated in the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paper of 1935 challenging the completeness of QM.
The high point of the analysis is the way Beller shows how the Copenhagen school shifted its focus from arguing for consistency to arguing for inevitability. This transformation was prompted by Einstein changing his position from finding a contradiction with the uncertainty relation to showing that the QM description of the state of a system was incomplete. Beller illustrates the shift by pointing out differences between Bohr's reply to the 1935 EPR paper and his 1928 Como lecture. His response to EPR was particularly apocalyptic, with its strong statements such as that there was "no question of any unambiguous interpretation of the symbols of quantum mechanics other than that embodied in the well-known rules".
Prior to EPR, concepts such as uncertainty and complementarity were attributed essentially to the uncontrollable and inevitable "disturbance" caused by a measurement. This notion of "disturbance" was crucial to the way in which EPR defined both "elements of reality" and the "locality condition". As Beller correctly points out, Bohr cleverly avoided questioning the locality condition. Instead he introduced the "wholeness" of the composite system, comprising the spatially separated parts together with the measuring set-up. This led to what Bohr criticised as an "ambiguity" in the EPR argument that hinged on inferring a value "without disturbing the system in question". However, the way a measurement on one sub-system specifies the experimental context of the other remained ambiguous in Bohr's reply. This was reflected in his introduction by fiat of the "unanalysability" of measurement interactions, a strange notion that restricts the universality of QM.
Beller quite clearly brings out the above weakness in Bohr's response to EPR. The book stresses that in the post-EPR period Bohr's mode of argumentation increasingly followed Louis Pasteur's maxim for a persuasive strategy: "Make it look inevitable." Bohr asserted as a "simple logical demand" the "indispensability" of the classical description of an apparatus, while leaving the boundary between quantum and classical behaviour unspecified. Interestingly, soon after his seminal 1925 paper, Heisenberg had become aware of the problem of reconciling quantum mechanics with the everyday macroscopic world. Ironically, this classical-limit problem remains one of the unresolved issues in QM.
As an example of the usefulness of "dialogical analysis", Beller undertakes a comparative study of Heisenberg's "seemingly confident" published paper suggesting the uncertainty relation and a draft he sent in a letter to Pauli. This brings out hidden ambiguities in the published paper. Another application of the method is Beller's decipherment of apparently obscure texts like Bohr's Como lecture. Beller seeks to demystify it by viewing it as a juxtaposition of several arguments directed towards different issues raised by Bohr's colleagues. Internal divergences within the Copenhagen school were skilfully smoothed over and an apparently monolithic structure with a sense of "finality" presented to the physics community as a whole. Beller discusses in depth, within this framework of "dialogical flux", how these rhetorical strategies adopted by Bohr and his colleagues worked to achieve triumph for the Copenhagen interpretation.
However, the entire story of alternative later approaches to interpreting QM, such as David Bohm's scheme and dynamical models of collapse, is omitted by Beller, because of the book's focus on the 1920s and 1930s. Seventy-five years on, foundational issues of QM are presently undergoing an extensive reappraisal. The role of "dialogical flux" in the current scenario needs its own critical study.
The 19th-century linguist Max Muller once observed: "I believe we both care far more for what is right than who is right ... Facts and correct deductions from facts are all we ought to care for." How hard the maintaining of this ethos is when personal prejudices and individual egos influence the making of a theory is the most important lesson conveyed by Quantum Dialogue . - Dipankar Home

Mara Beller's book centers around the quantum revolution, using it to describe first the "anatomy of scientific discovery" and then the "strategies of consolidation" of a particular theory (in this case, the orthodox Copenhagen interpretation). Her emphasis is on the notion of dialogue, specifically as a process used by scientists to reach their conclusions -- and a means for the historian and philosopher of science to retrace those steps and understand "how revolutionary stories in history of science are constructed."
       Beller goes on to detail a "dialogical" approach to the understanding of scientific discovery and of the dominance of specific theories over others ("a tentative program for a dialogical historiography of science"). The Copenhagen interpretation provides a convincing example of her methodology. Retelling the story of the quantum revolution, she is able to sharply differentiate it from the simplified historical accounts (often fostered by the main actors) that concentrate on the results and not how they were obtained (and, in fact, blur and omit many of the steps in seeking the appearance of inevitability about the results).
       Scientific dialogue is a fruitful area of study, because so much of science does arise out of dialogue. Science is rarely done in isolation. Indeed, science is famous for the constant exchange of ideas, the constant communication between those involved. In conversation, at conferences, in the many professional journals, in letters, and, evermore, via the Internet there is a constant flow of ideas and debate that lead to further scientific advancement.
       The quantum revolution is fairly well documented in the letters, lectures, papers, and reminiscences of the scientists involved in it. Beller makes the most of this material in re-examining the process of discovery using her dialogic approach. Her book is remarkable for this undertaking alone, a valuable chapter in the history of science. Whether in pointing out significant contributions from scientists who have since been relegated to the sidelines in historical accounts, or in showing how much retroactive re-defining of problems and approaches the quantum revolution has been subject to, Beller shines an illuminating light on much that has long been hidden in shadowy darkness.
       Much of the record is clear, yet still subject to misinterpretation. A notable example is the unfortunate consequences of the misguided hero worship around Niels Bohr. As Beller points out, "part of the Bohrian myth is that he thought very clearly and only expressed himself obscurely," and she dares suggest that, in a number of instances, his thinking too was muddled. Bohr's ambiguous presentation allows for a multitude of interpretations, satisfying different concerns of different audiences -- a situation Beller rightly sees as troublesome. Bohr's complementarity, in particular, is vulnerable to criticism because it is never clearly and consistently defined or delineated, but it generally remains above reproach. Beller shows that such uncritical acceptance can help to lead to the unwarranted hegemony of an idea (as occurred with Bohr and the Copenhagen interpretation).
       Beller speaks of the "rhetoric of inevitability" surrounding the Copenhagen interpretation, pointing out that both the rhetoric and the interpretation itself rest on "two central pillars -- positivism and the doctrine of the necessity of classical concepts." As Beller shows, these are vulnerable pillars. Nevertheless, historically the rhetoric of the inevitability of the Copenhagen interpretation prevailed. It is a fascinating process that led to the adoption and success of the theory, with personality conflicts, hero worship, and a fair amount of ambiguity all playing a role -- all carefully documented and detailed by Beller.
       An excellent example is also the misconstruction of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen argument. Beller dismisses Bohr's response, and suggests why he nevertheless emerged as a victor in the argument:
A few ingenious rhetorical moves characterize Bohr's response and create the illusion of victory. By giving a short, nonmathematical summary of the dense and complex EPR paper, Bohr ensured that few would read the EPR paper itself.
       The overwhelming majority of presentations of the Bohr-Einstein debate use Bohr's nonmathematical summary of EPR. Yet this summary is misleading and introduces weaknesses not present in the original EPR paper. Those who lightly dismiss the EPR challenge dismiss in fact Bohr's version of it.
       This is one of the more contentious sections of Beller's book, source of what we are certain will be much lively debate. (We leave it to the professionals, though we acknowledge that Beller makes an impressive case for her point of view.)
       The evidence Beller presents regarding the quantum revolution clearly supports one of her conclusions:
The Copenhagen interpretation was erected, not as a consistent philosophical framework, but as a collection of local responses to changing challenges from the opposition.
       The hegemony of the Copenhagen interpretation has been surprisingly enduring, still keeping much criticism at bay. Beller addresses the fate of alternate theories, particularly David Bohm's. Again, her dialogic approach is fruitful in explaining the dominance of one interpretation -- and in suggesting where weaknesses can be found that will eventually lead to scientists moving beyond it.
       Overall Beller makes a very convincing case with her well-constructed argument. Neatly summing up her points, she presents an argument -- and a dialogic approach -- that seem an immensely useful addition to the field.
        Quantum Dialogue is a quite stunning achievement, offering a wealth of material specifically about the quantum revolution but also suggesting broader applications of Beller's approach. Clearly written, well presented, and exceptionally well researched it is an impressive example of scientific, philosophical, and historical analysis. The implications of the work are far-reaching, and it is highly recommended to any and all interested in the philosophy and history of science.
       Quantum Dialogue is a specialist book, clearly written for an academic audience. It is not highly technical, though some scientific literacy is necessary to make one's way through it and familiarity with the basics of quantum mechanics are necessary for a full understanding of a number of the points discussed. There is little demanding maths (an eigenfunction or two, relegated to the footnotes, mention of Hamiltonians and the like) and we suspect the book will be at least fundamentally comprehensible to anyone whose eyes do not blur over at the mere sight of terms such as "matrix theory" and "wave-particle duality". However, philosophical and scientific backgrounds certainly help facilitate understanding (and enjoyment) of the text. - The Complete Review

Mara Beller, a professor of history and philosophy of science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has devoted several works to various aspects of the history of quantum mechanics; this book synthesises her findings. Two main threads are apparent in this book, each addressing a rather different audience, although the two threads emerge from the same case studies: A) a revisionist history of quantum mechanics, which would be of the greatest interest to any physicist who ever felt baffled by quantum mechanics; B) a new approach to the history of ideas, or to philosophy of science or epistemology, which would be more of interest to philosophers or historians of science. A) Revisionist history of quantum mechanics. In the author's analysis, the historical account of the development of three concepts of quantum mechanics is in need of major revision: the emergence of matrix mechanics; the notion of quantum uncertainty; and Bohr's principle of complementarity. In a similar vein, the author argues that the received wisdom about the development and acceptance of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is flawed. According to Beller's analysis, Heisenberg's opposition to Schrodinger's wave mechanics was not primarily physical, but sociological: Heisenberg did draw some insights from Schrodinger's works, and was originally sympathetic, but became virulently critical of wave mechanics when it threatened to overshadow his own matrix mechanics (Chapter 2 to Chapter 5). Heisenberg's desire to achieve preeminence recurs throughout the book (e.g., pp. 70-71, 195). Bohr's principle of complementarity is scrutinised thoroughly (Chapters 6 and 11). The author's conclusion is that the principle was never clearly stated by Bohr, was used inconsistently, and was applied in areas (like psychology) where it was unlikely to represent more than a clumsy metaphor. While the book is not intended to be a critical biography of Niels Bohr, it could certainly fulfill the role. Nearly four pages of the bibliography are filled with references to Bohr publications, and Bohr's scientific work is discussed in no less than 8 chapters (from Chapter 6 to Chapter 13). Mara Beller does not shy from pointing out Bohr's conceptual about-faces, rhetorical strategies, and scientific shallowness. In contrast to most scholars and nearly all physicists, she refuses to ascribe to her intellectual limitations her difficulty in grasping Bohr's thought. In her opinion, if Bohr's physical and philosophal views appear contradictory, it is not because of their subtlety, but because they are poorly conceived (Chapter 12). In particular, in the Einstein-Bohr exchange on the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox, the author is very critical of Bohr's argumentation, which is described as deceitful (Chapter 7). Mara Beller asserts that the 'triumph of the Copenhagen interpretation' has less to do with its explanatory power than with the success of the Copenhagen school in enforcing orthodoxy among the vast majority of physicists. Furthermore, the traditionally accepted history of quantum mechanics is presented as an instance of 'Whiggish history' (history written by the winner). These points are developed in particular in Chapters 9 and 10. B) New approach to the history of ideas. As a historian and philosopher of science, Mara Beller is trying to discover how scientific progress takes place. Several prominent scholars have proposed approaches on this topic, most notably Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, and more recently the social constructivists. Dissatisfied with these, and particularly with Kuhn's approach (Chapter 14), she proposes instead the dialogical approach, discussed in Chapters 1 and 15. Although the discussion is lucid, the present reviewer was left with the impression that, in the end, adoption of a scientific model in the dialogical approach is a matter of taste. (This potential weakness may well disappear once the approach has had a chance to mature.) The central chapters of this book are certainly worth reading for any physicist with an interest in quantum mechanics. In particular, students struggling with the Copenhagen interpretation might find Chapters 9 to 13 (or any subset of these) to be quite an eye opener. - Claude Plante

In Quantum Dialog, Mara Beller presents a revisionist history of the
development of quantum theory and its philosophy. The author, a professor of
the history and philosophy of science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
focuses on the controversies of the late 1920s. Her approach, which she calls
"dialogical," consists of a comprehensive analysis of the participants'
conversations, letters, lectures, and other writings to produce a complete
context within which to contemplate the sources of their ideas, their progress,
and their motivations. The technique leaves much room for the contributions of
minor players and the arguments of dissenters. As the author is intensely
aware, these can be buried in the rewriting of history that invariably takes
place as a successful theory comes first to be accepted, then presented as an
irresistible standard, and finally is made to seem inevitable. Beller makes a
good case for how the steamroller of orthodoxy came to take over the
development of quantum theory. But while she makes her point in many ways, she
unfortunately also demonstrates the serious weaknesses in the technique,
wherein one's own convictions can lead one to make much too much out of very
little evidence. Ultimately the argument bogs down in her thoroughly
unconvincing attacks on the intellectual integrity of figures such as Bohr and
Heisenberg.
The first half of the book shows how Heisenberg, Bohr, Born, and their
collaborators slowly developed the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory,
partly in response to challenges from Schrödinger, Einstein, and others. This
was primarily a process of trying to splice together a consistent
explanation--using various thought experiments, with the gradual inclusion of
the uncertainty principle, complementarity, and Bohr's insistence of the
importance of classical measuring devices--while refuting the objections that
were constantly being raised against the theory. Beller sees as the end product
of this process an inconsistent melange of ideas, where others see a totally
consistent theory.
In the second half of the book, the author makes a case for a gradual shift in
the rhetoric of defending and explaining the theory. The arguments that showed
the consistency of the standard interpretation were, through a process of grand
overreaching, slowly replaced by an account that claimed to show the
inevitability of this interpretation. Beller believes that its acceptance was
no simple success story, but was due primarily to intimidation and abuse of
authority by Bohr and his collaborators.
Now there are many accounts in the literature that show that Bohr's charisma
and single-minded determination could, at times, prove rather daunting, and so
her arguments to this effect seem to make sense up to a point. But she goes way
overboard and implies a conscious attempt by Bohr and Heisenberg to browbeat
the opposition into accepting an interpretation that they knew could not be
defended. She uses words, like "deceptive," that imply a deliberate
intellectual dishonesty on their part. It is hard to deny the strength of her
conviction in quotes like "There was neither belief nor commitment on
Heisenberg's part--only a selective and opportunistic use of Bohrian doctrine
in those circumstances where Heisenberg's aim was to argue against the
opposition...This is a characteristic example of a powerful social strategy of
legitimation disguised as an abstract theoretical argument." But the evidence
just doesn't support such a negative spin on the situation.
Beller attributes the acceptance of the Copenhagen interpretation by most
physicists, in no small part, to hero worship. She believes that "One cannot
overestimate the impact of the authority figure in the evaluation and
acceptance of ideas. Bohr's unprecedented authority not only promoted the
widespread, uncritical acceptance of the Copenhagen philosophy but obtained a
favorable reception for his dubious and poorly developed ideas outside of his
area of competence." She gives many quotes to indicate his acceptance as a
"father figure," both professional and personal, to the younger physicists
about him. She claims "it became almost obligatory, when writing about Bohr, to
refer to the 'subtlety' of his thinking." She then points out that he was
exceptionally hard to understand and essentially accuses everyone who praised
the depth of his thought of having been intimidated into accepting obscurity as
profundity. When she quotes "Pais graciously remarks that 'Bohr's strength lay
in his formidable intuition and insight rather than in erudition'" (my
italics), she cannot believe that he really means it.
Although even Bohr's intellectual opponents (Bohm and Hiley) call him subtle,
she remarks that they too felt the pressure of intimidation. She seems to feel
that everyone but her has been cowed by this--even Einstein and Schrödinger.
The tremendous displays of warmth and affection for Bohr shown by the students
at his institute, and even their parodying of him, Beller takes as further
evidence of "hero worship and the associated suppression of criticism." She
quotes an anecdote by Feynman to the effect that when the young Feynman met
Bohr at Los Alamos and (not knowing who he was) criticized him, Bohr suggested
that the next time they discussed ideas they should do so privately, so as to
avoid all the big shots who always said "yes, yes Dr. Bohr." She offers this to
show how intimidated physicists were by Bohr but seems unaware that the
anecdote also has a contrary interpretation--one suggesting both Bohr's great
sensitivity and how the enormous affection everyone had for him might have been
earned.
By the way, the issue here is not whether physicists are hero worshipers. My
own experience convinces me that they certainly are. The real issue is whether
Bohr would deliberately and dishonestly use his authority to intimidate others
into accepting a position that he did not believe to be true.
Beller takes great pains to show that Bohr was not at home with difficult
mathematics, and she uses this to imply that he was actually, deep down, sort
of a bumbler. She even calls him "a tragic figure," who should not have been
taken so seriously by so many great physicists. But truly great insights in
physics rarely come primarily from mathematical sophistication, and I find her
arguments somewhat irrelevant to the issue of how much respect Bohr is due.
Einstein, who never accepted Bohr's interpretation of quantum theory, called
Bohr's insights "the highest form of musicality in the sphere of thought."
(This quote is not from Beller's book, but it is hard for me to see
intimidation at work here.)
As a parallel case, I remember when I found out that Irving Berlin could not
read a note of music. Rather than convince me that his songs were no longer
worth listening to, this made me appreciate all the more what a phenomenal
natural genius he must have been. My reaction to Bohr's mathematical
deficiencies is similar.
Also, many of Beller's other arguments against Bohr depend on accepting her
reading of very weak evidence. There is just no smoking gun here. When one
reads everything someone has written over several decades, it is easy to find
shifting opinions, contradictions, and confusing remarks. This does not
necessarily make a case for intellectual dishonesty. Nor does trying to use
different strategies of argument, geared to different types of audiences, prove
that one is disingenuous. I think Beller is guilty of trying to force the worst
possible conclusions out of very slight and ambiguous evidence. The problem is
that she has not approached her subject with a very open mind. One can begin to
see her bias in comments such as "One interesting attempt to find some
stability, objectivity, and cohesion, despite the impressive impact of social
studies of science that deny those characteristics to science, is..." This
jaundiced look at science in general leads to such opinions as "finality is an
ideological, not a conceptual, position, and this is perhaps the reason
scientific controversy often looks more like a political campaign, with one
side discrediting and caricaturing the other, than an open-minded dialogue
about fundamentals."
So what is one to make of Quantum Dialog? The author makes a good case for the
contention that arguments about the consistency of the Copenhagen
interpretation came to support the incorrect conclusion that it was the only
possible interpretation. How could this happen? I think this is a fascinating
question, well worth a book. But I also think that it is a serious mistake to
look for villains. That makes the process much simpler and less significant
than it was. The problem becomes much more interesting and important when one
sees the process unfolding and asks how could so many people, all looking for
the truth, have convinced themselves that one viable interpretation was
actually unique and unassailable.
It is easy to construct a much more conventional and, to my mind, plausible
scenario as to how this occurred, one without conspiracy theories. Furthermore,
scientists like to believe that the scientific enterprise is a self-correcting
one. And although there is nothing inevitable in the process, in the case of
quantum theory, one can see the corrections slowly taking place. The original
Copenhagen interpretation had a tremendous formal mathematical beauty, and Von
Neumann had "proven" that a hidden variable interpretation was not viable. So
it is easy to see how most physicists accepted this and considered the matter
closed.
Only in the 1950s did Bohm invent his alternate model, which led John Bell to
disprove Von Neumann's result. (Beller mentions a previous argument against Von
Neumann's proof by a student of Heisenberg, but because she doesn't give any
details, one cannot evaluate its merit.) Bell then also proved his own famous
theorem, which showed that one can experimentally test certain types of
realistic interpretations. This not only led to a series of still-ongoing
experiments to test aspects of various interpretations, but it also increased
interest in the possibility of other interpretations. Since then, Bohm's
interpretation and several others as well have slowly been winning converts.
Many philosophers have become interested in the new models. In general, the
situation is now much more favorable for the acceptance of new models than it
was in the past, although none have yet caught on among working physicists,
mostly because there are no new experimental situations that have needed to be
explained by them. But in this history, one can see the gradual development of
an open-mindedness in the field.
Scientists unfortunately do jump on bandwagons and make flawed judgments, and
this does slow the process of choosing between theories. But in this case the
process does seem to be slowly correcting itself. There is no necessity for
seeing dark forces at work here or for impugning the character of the
scientists. Making Heisenberg and Bohr into villains doesn't ring true and
doesn't solve the interesting problems involved. (Of course, Beller is fully
aware of everything I have said above, but she would certainly not agree with
me. To the extent that one denies objectivity to science, "self-correcting"
becomes a meaningless concept, and one is forced to find more sinister
explanations based on the foibles of individuals.) - Daniel Greenberger


An interesting essay by Beller regarding the so-called Sokal-hoax
Copenhagen - Another Round by Beller 
Comments of the Fictional Character ‘Michael Frayn’ on Mara Beller’s Another Round 

Don't come up for air - contains experimental forms like divorce papers, a prayer, a letter, fictional definitions, a horoscope, and lots of beautiful and unusual art. This volume features writers and artists from all over the world

Don't come up for air, theNewerYork, 2015.

The fourth volume of our experimental literature anthology and the first with color throughout, Book IV contains experimental forms like divorce papers, a prayer, a letter, fictional definitions, a horoscope, and lots of beautiful and unusual art. This volume features writers and artists from all over the world. The book is designed by our very own Nils Davey, who has found various exciting ways to frame and present the stories, resulting in a book that is a visual and intellectual experience. We give attention to every detail of the book and it makes for an immersive and bizarre reading experience. Check out what words can do.

Experimental without being pompous, and ignoring cult of personality in favor of quality and creativity, theNewerYork’s Book IV is the best yet.

Writers:

Carabella Sands, Christine Tierney, Gerar Edizel, Shelly Weathers, Manuel Abreu, Ghada Khalil, Jeff Friedman, Richard Penner, Sara Woods, Jesse Bradley, Alice Atlas, Evan Allgood, A.M. O’Malley, Nadia de Vries, Brad Garber, Max Miroff, Mollie Boutell, Steve Vermillion, Michael Shirzadian, Ani Bakhchadzyan, Kait Heacock, Chuck Young, Gessy Alvarez, Andy Valentine, J.H Yun, and Joelle Schumacher.
Artists:
Kim Roselier, Jeannie Lynn Paske, Nils Davey, Stefan Zsaitsits, Stephen Lipman, Aniela Sobieski, Ben Stainton, David Lee Price, James Gallagher, David de las Heras, Karl James Mountford, Jake Kean Mayman and Ryan Humphrey.
http://theneweryork.com/shop/product/theneweryork-book-iv/

Ars Cogitanda - Cast as the footnotes to an invisible text, the beings identified as the “assembled footnoters” roil their way through the text chastising, exhorting, praising, fulminating, and otherwise reacting to that which cannot be perceived

Ars Cogitanda. footnote to silence. gnOme. 2014.

. Characters such as Gertrude, the sinoburius fossil and Stanley the long-dead Australopithecine anchor narrative components of the text, as limited as they may be. Silence, which erupts in various guises, variously represents the body, inarticulate spaces between letters, the unwanted, the unknowable. Drawing upon an large body of scientific work ranging from inter-kingdom bacterial signalling to the neurology of empathy, the manuscript explores what it means to think of ourselves as things in the world of posthuman systems theory. Referencing the powers and weaknesses of language and its more fundamental cousin somatic communication, the manuscript de-articulates standard conceptual frameworks that found themselves on passive notions of the material universe. Opening on a critique of “thing theory,” the text boils a stew of Western magical and philosophical thinking using the evidence and tropes of science as both pot and fire.

“The senses delicately collide in Ars Cogitanda’s work. The poet builds images with the precision touch of an author of haiku, choosing words as if they were toothpicks placed in an elaborate sculpture, yet allowing each image to expand beyond the constraints of the haiku form. Like all successful poetry, Ars Cogitanda’s work offers readers a glimpse into the poet’s perspective, a step into a synesthetic world.” –  Ken Hunt

“In footnote to Silence, Ars Cogitanda luminously provides us with insight into the workings of the inner universe. While we all listen to the dramatic narrative of our lives, it is the footnotes, the asides, the glossed over insignificant events that hold reality together. By twisting our perspective to listen to the silence rather than the noise (with Silence as “the ephemeral text as an object”), we can inquire more deeply into the thoughts and experiences that compose us. In language sometimes lyrical, sometimes playful, sometimes coldly scientific, but always inventive, Ars Cogitanda leads us down the byways of the mind where limbic floods of perception await.” – John C. Goodman

“This is a strange, wonderful book. The footnotes are alternately bewildering, deeply funny and strangely lyrical. They will persuade you, baffle you and send you off to cross-reference. They will remove the top of your head again and again.” – Jennifer Zilm

“I was struck by the humour in the pages I read.” – E.W. of V

“Here at theNewerYork, one of our main guidelines for a piece of writing is that it be experimental without being obtuse. While creating an entire manuscript made up of footnotes is certainly experimental, the results, unfortunately, feel inaccessible for the most part. For this to be a more successful experiment (at least as far as we define success in such things), there would be more of a clear throughline, something more for the reader to latch onto that would compel them to continue reading. While there are snippets of intrigue to be found, such as in the discussion of the occult and tarot cards, as well as short passages with a more narrative style, like the one with Gertrude, the more compelling parts of the manuscript just do not outweigh what otherwise seems to be a very academic, dry paper in style and substance. The work doesn’t necessarily need clearer characters or more of a story, but it would benefit from more connections between ideas or more opportunities for emotional connection. It’s also possible that a strong editorial hand could cut this down to the most interesting footnotes and ideas, thus keeping the reader compelled throughout. At this length, however, the footnotes become wearisome. We won’t be accepting this manuscript. Thank you for your time and your submission.” – Daniel Bullard-Bates

“What are you? A talking dog?” – S.G. of V.

Felipe Benítez Reyes tracks the nonsensical, disorienting, and rather tragicomic journey of three monarchs lost in a boundless desert, on a long, dark, and endless night, in which the notions of power, place, and purpose are all tipped on their heads and crushed

Felipe Benítez Reyes, The Errant Astrologers. Trans. by Emily Toder. Ugly Duckling Presse; Reprint ed., 2013.




This three-act play in verse by Spanish poet, novelist, and dramaturge Felipe Benítez Reyes, tracks the nonsensical, disorienting, and rather tragicomic journey of three monarchs lost in a boundless desert, on a long, dark, and endless night, in which the notions of power, place, and purpose are all tipped on their heads and crushed. In a paradoxically classic fusion of the chivalrous and postmodern traditions, THE ERRANT ASTROLOGERS is like waiting for Godot with Sancho Panza, all on the set of Ishtar, and told in the haunting, rich verse of Reyes's own.

The blind night,

and the moon that is the eye of the blind night,

the eye that looks at me

with the white look of the blind,

because the night is blind,

and the moon is the blind eye that looks at me

and sees me not.

I wander blinded by the blind night.

I ?oat in the darkness

as the moon ?oats,

the blind eye,

and the blind night,

and the blind moon as well,

the useless eye,

and I wander blind,

invisible in this great dimness of blind theatre.

Felipe Benítez Reyes' The Errant Astrologers, a "legend in verse in three acts," follows three "astrologers" (wayward kings, more like it) as they seek a wandering star from a shared dream. Much of the legend finds the kings winding through the wilderness, having abandoned their kingdoms and engaging in philosophic, playful, and sometimes violent dialogue. It becomes clear during the play that, while the sought-after star is their destination, it mostly represents an unknown for the characters. This unknown also becomes a quality reflected in the verse, which itself sometimes meanders.
The book ably floats between the genres of poetry and playwriting, while not calling attention to its floating; this must be part of its appeal: its neither-nor-ness. It indulges in ambiguity, but the prose is approachable; it is neither a strict narrative nor a strictly abstract or philosophical text, but a little of each. Reyes' style shifts between that of an epic poem or ballad:

I, King Damascón,
who has heard the feet of death splash about
in the springs of blood, when the battleground became a red whirlpool.

and at times the language is folkloric, fable-like:

…my feet ask me each night:
"Where will you take us at sunrise,
my lord?"

There is also a touch of the unfamiliar and the strange, both in language and narrative. Each of the kings is given a defined character: Damascón, the tyrant; Amerín, the fool; Kagba, the sensitive empath. But while we immediately recognize these characters in their roles, none of them seems real. The only indication of their existence is their acknowledgement of one another; otherwise, we can only trust their apparently thin proclamations of their own importance to their kingdoms. The kings' speech is often highly dramatic, and makes little reference to the material world. The aim of their dialogue, it sometimes seems, is to establish themselves in a vaporous environment; this, paired with their non-sequiturs and circular banter, gives a dreamlike feeling to the bare scenery.
Though present, the play's moments of surrealism and allusions to figures such as Jesus Christ and Lear are faint enough to resist pinning it down into a singular genre or discussion. The book is clearly rooted in a literary tradition, and offers a quietly political warning against the futility of ownership and of following costly, unattainable ideals:

Look at a golden crown
in the light of the moon
and it will seem a trinket.
Look at a silver necklace
in the plain light of day
and its poverty will shock you.

but its politics, too, seem to be shielded in order to protect it from the stigmatization that would also threaten to pigeonhole it. It's timely in that way.
The experience of reading Reyes' work is multiple: feeling let in on a private chance encounter between power-wielding strangers, getting lost among spoken and actual circumambulation, and drifting outside the parameters of the book's world that, like Calvino's Invisible Cities, is built of materials recognizable to us but constructed in such a way that it feels alien, mesmerizing. It is just beyond the reach of reality, and carries a secrecy about it that makes its initial seeming-simplicity a bit deceptive. It's a world worth the investment it takes to live within it for a short time. - Jamie Edlin

The Errant Astrologers reviewed in Boog City

Felipe Benítez Reyes (1960, Cádiz), is a poet, novelist, essayist, and translator. The author of many highly-acclaimed works, he is one of the most influential voices in contemporary Spanish literature. He has earned various literary distinctions, among them, the Luis Cernuda prize, the Nadal Prize, and the National Book Award and the National Critics Award for his 1996 collection Vidas improbables (of which an English translation was published by BOA Editions in 2006). He lives in the town of Rota, Andalusia, with his wife, the translator Silvia Barbero.

Nathaniel Farrell - Part historical fiction and part nature poem, NEWCOMER takes place in a wartime landscape estranged by nostalgia and American story-telling. A soldier passes through a landscape that is mutable, both familiar and foreign, while memories of home come in waves, receding and reappearing in images of crisp grass and in the sounds of wind. Military epic mixes with pastoral romance, and neither are resolved

Nathaniel Farrell, Newcomer. Ugly Duckling Presse, 2014.


Part historical fiction and part nature poem, NEWCOMER takes place in a wartime landscape estranged by nostalgia and American story-telling. A soldier passes through a landscape that is mutable, both familiar and foreign, while memories of home come in waves, receding and reappearing in images of crisp grass and in the sounds of wind. Military epic mixes with pastoral romance, and neither are resolved. Instead, NEWCOMER's investigation of entropic minutia suggests a very contemporary (perhaps post-traumatic) confusion of temporality, and by this turns our thoughts toward a phenomenology of historical imagination.




These are Nathaniel Farrell’s poems, of course, but when I read them they are mine, too: common life told with common words, resounding and clean. Their setting may be historical, ostensibly the Civil War, but their concerns are the stuff of daily life, glimpsed from porches and saddles and moonlit camps and recorded with quiet intensity. The simple counters of weather, family, fields, and roads make for homesick songs that anyone might sing. In an age of hard trying, such anonymity is a virtue and a pleasure. - Devin Johnston

With mesmerizing grace, Nathaniel Farrell’s poem sequence interlaces the world of memory with radically immediate impressions of the land. Sense exceeds circumstance as a soldier from an indeterminate time, fighting an indeterminate war, moves through new country, grasping at the specters of the rural life he left. In faceted lines and precise diction, Farrell creates a landscape where the enemy may have just passed “the same hawks menaced by little birds,” where soldiers become “nothing more than needle and thread / pushed and pulled in and out of the land.”Newcomer is a stunning milito-pastoral in daguerreotype, fading to amber at the edges. - Ted Mathys


Editor's Introduction
Nathaniel Farrell’s book-length poem, Newcomer (Ugly Duckling, 2014), from which these excerpts originate, could be read as a genealogy of the political self. Threading himself through the pastoral landscapes that have for background an unnamed and intemporal war, the likewise unnamed speaker seems to traverse the boundary between symbol and thing as he travels between the things that cannot be said and the things that get said instead of them. Denied the origin of the narrator’s wanderings, we never do get to parse between war as a contingent and destructive force, and war as the experience of being born in a world in which we must die. Instead, it is the impossibility of making the distinction that gives Newcomer its force.
The speaker seems to accept this interregnum between the thing and the symbol that grows from out of it. Often, in Newcomer, experience seems to just elude the speaker, as he attempts to tell it, leaving us with the sense that something that could have been told was not lived enough to be able to tell it. Sometimes the poems are infused with the smell of the earth, and with the warmth of light, but with a lacuna nonetheless in the experience of it: The same sun shines in a land that’s not mine anymore / But I can’t see it shining.  I see it going home instead / To loved ones…(62).  It is at moments like these that the speaker appeals to an imagined reader to see it, who then becomes the real reader, recruited now, to traverse with the author the distance between thing and symbol, between being in oneself and seeing oneself, and between civic blindness and civic duty.
At other times, the speaker reverts into a child-world that is less the past than another possible now: a now in which the subject takes the world as its familiar, as if the childlike absorption were a force that affects the balance of the world: On Sundays the children will play in the yard, the fence bowing under the littlest watching. (44).  Underlying this is the "adult" context: the soldierly being-subject to the world. So that moments such as when the speaker says, I'm holding my battery between two pennies / to warm my fingers up / to do the laces, create an echo for these childlike moments of connectivity. In this iteration, however, they propel the speaker back into his place in the configuration that was assigned to him,  leaving a smaller field of play, perhaps a microcosm of the expansive, childlike world, a world where the frames can be seen, but which still offers no more answer to the question of where we are.
We might think, in Newcomer, of Nathaniel Hawthorne's character, Wakefield, a man who, in the short story of the same name, walked out of his home one day, and returned one rainy evening twenty years later, after having lived during this time on the next street over, where he could see into the window of his own house.  "Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world," Hawthorne writes, "individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another, and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever." Newcomer seems to reveal the dangerous distance between a system so attuned to itself that it has lost all sense of that which lies outside it, and the horror that happens when one finds oneself outside. - Noam Scheindlin

from NEWCOMER

Everybody likes to listen as he pulls the threads
at the corners of the handkerchief, white threads
thin as burdock's deep but fragile roots.
We bend together over the trinket,
take turns blocking the wind—the same wind
that during the day slowly pulls apart the milkweed pod
blows all its contents away except what sticks
to pant leg and boot lace.
 
 
I am only ever tired in the mornings now, knowing that
my boots will be worn down
only over unfamiliar ground, knowing that my scar
appears when I don't shave and disappears when I do.
I used to polish my shoes before I went to see her.
Before she went to bed she braided her hair, she
told me so, that it kept it nice. She kept
dancing with me even when her shoes hurt her.
They say it moves through you like wind, but I think it moves over me
more like wind over water.
 
 
I am in every photograph we take. I put my heart
into the flat part of another forking road, the part still with grass
after the tracks have been dug by the loads carried over it, as if
beneath the road there were still grass. But beneath
the part that is and isn't a road
the part that is and isn't a heart
there is only dirt.
Our hats tilt back across our foreheads a little more every hour.
I could tell then that I would be able to tell
what time of day it was when we took each picture
just as I can tell where we were
when we took it by how many of us there are.
 
 
I watch until it moves to tell whether it's
an arm or a leg
or a branch or a root.
If it's a man, it moves slower than a tree. If it's
a root it grows toward
the water as slow as the stream cuts the dirt from beneath
the bank
until there is no bank.
I grow old slow
among men not growing old at all. The puddles
already deep enough for a bird to wash in, but
if I stay flat
the ground under me will stay dry
and warm.
 
 
The beach inland is there
because we brought it in our pockets.
We're waiting for snow so we can boil it.
I'm dreaming of the oceanside
rolled up like a sleeve cuff, rolled down like a pant leg.
Ice shifts in the lake above us—
wet wool pulls at our shoulders.
Grain by grain, what's left of the sand
goes from the creases of our clothes
into the road frozen in knots the last march left it in.
I'm holding a battery between two pennies
to warm my fingers up
to do the laces.
 
 
Letters bring news of family friends,
family feuds settled
and renewed, birth, death, fights
in town, acres sold to the highest bidder.
Her father, his ring—the compass
and the square—his handshake.
Her mother at the window watching
washing the dishes, lecturing her daughters about us.
 
 
Her father's trees will be a little taller;
grass will have begun to grow through the new stone wall.
Her husband will have carried the rocks from the field
and taught her how to teach him
the things he should do to make her happier.
On Sundays the children will play in the yard, the fence
bowing under the littlest watching.
 
 
Behind the border
our shoulders are broader but worn by the packs we carry.
After long enough
all things make their mark.
Sleep puts me behind her limb by limb.
No memories of home come to me.
Maybe tomorrow or the next day:
my sister squinting, holding a split end up to the light
finding the tails with her fingernails.
 
 
I used to believe I could sleep if I had
only the shade of a picket fence to lie in—
sleep so deep that nothing would be able to grow under me.
When some animals can't get shade,
they can think of nothing else. We learn this very young
watching cows in the summer. Here, in the sun,
I think of how big a trunk I would need
to have shade enough to sleep in, for how long
I could sleep how far
from the tree before
the sun moves it away from me.

http://www.warscapes.com/poetry/newcomer

Newcomer by Nathaniel Farrell begins with advice to a future farmer. What is left of this life and land is hidden. What we uncover is feeling through association of time and place. Newcomer is a conversation with our younger selves and with the American past. Written in the voice of a Civil War soldier with rural homeward bound thoughts, we hear of a river that moves to free a slave, battles with canons and men in wool wet coats, fields full of corpses and birds who we must always try to stay above.

Newcomer feels like wandering through an antique store and touching hand-made lace. It’s like standing on the open plains before the build up of walmarts and mini-malls. It’s like tall blowing grasses and warm sun. Like walking down a frozen road in New England in silence.

Sherwood Anderson wrote in his 1919 novel Winesburg, Ohio of a time when farmers would gather on Sundays around a potbellied stove in the general store. They would gather in silence. Content to share a warm physical space. This all changed with radio. Soon farmers all over middle America could speak the same as men in the East, North, South and West. We have an absence of silence today. Less of an inner world. less of an inner self. What is thought must be said. What is said is forgotten among all the other speak we constantly hear.

How many ruins and wars we blindly walk over. “Everything I can remember with my hands I see where seeing stops me.” Newcomer is a poem in honor of memory. Is a poem to make us remember.

Farrell says “This is the kind of weather that makes men’s minds wander too far into town” What brilliant longing. This is rural loneliness. This is a life of wind and water and survival.

Newcomer is a book of feeling. Here is a log in the rain. Here I am balancing on this log. This is what it feels like to be outside while others watch from within. -Tova Gannana

Nathaniel Farrell's Newcomer is the imagined journal of a very eloquent foot soldier, most likely from the American Civil War.  But Newcomer is not about war.  It is about being human.

These short verses are untitled but connected.  Newcomer flows with a silky Shelby Foote voice.  It is a quiet, considered look at the minutiae of life that continues unabated by the calamities of war.

...

Horses move between
rifles and shoulders and unsent letters.
We pass a place where one body of water
meets another body of water. Down below
the surf moves like a lock of hair
twisting up and down the coast.
When we stop I wonder how a man
can eat with tears in his eyes, how
another man can eat with sweat over his,
how I can eat in sight of so much water.

9
...

I was completely transfixed by Farrell's steady, sure tone, his hypnotic hold on the reader is a pleasure to endure.  The voice in these poems is an instant familiar.

...

The morning sun burns off the fog. In this heat
the smell of the sea follows us inland.
Every hour I spend lagging behind, telling my own future
like a dog chasing a stick into the surf, wondering why
fog feels more wet when you rub your fingers in it.

29
...

Farrell muses about the weather and the when, why, where of spider webs - and just like a spider's web, these poems works mostly by unseen tethers, with delicate ferocity.

...

I am in every photograph we take. I put my heart
into the flat part of another forking road, the part still with grass
after the tracks have been dug by the loads carried over it, as if
beneath the road there were still grass. But beneath
the part that is and isn't a road
the part that is and isn't a heart
there is only dirt.
Our hats tilt back across our foreheads a little more every hour.
I could tell then that I would be able to tell
what time of day it was when we took each picture
just as I can tell where we were
when we took it by how many of us there are.

30
...

Farrell does not avoid the blunt face of war, he marks that bitter pill - but mostly he wants to be human and not fodder.  Our narrator reminds us of his humanity by constantly marking his place in the natural world.

...

At night in the clearing
the moon shines on the sleeping faces of men
making their beards curl up
like in dim pasture
lambs curl into the shape of sheep.
Lesser men moan in their sleep
to be treated like they are during the day
to dream out of rank at night.

52
...

I loved the precision in these poems, the human warmth in the hero's voice.  Newcomer is a mesmerizing read from the opening salvo. - michaeldennispoet.blogspot.com/2014/09/newcomer-nathaniel-farrell-ugly.html