Review of John Bennett's Neolipic

[De Villo Sloan]

Ron Silliman recently posted an announcement on his blog of the release of John M. Bennett’s Neolipic. The fact that Silliman linked the book seemed an event deserving some small celebration, but then he does make an attempt to present a variety of perspectives. Neolipic is a gathering of 158 poly-language poems by one of the great masters of vispo in the U.S. The fact that Bennett has made the book available as a free download is a gift to his audience. This is a wonderful example of the energy and innovation in vispo, made all the more powerful in contrast with a looted, wrecked, and commodified culture engulfing us. Try finding lines like these (from “Turn Over”) in the branded kultur:

“…dusted off the chigger I was

saving for a boiling day an

F'd it always leaning to the

reft so that’s my ferris

wheel crashing off the dock the

turning water I was flo

ating in a chair the clouds

were spinach muscled in

my loot …”

No conditioned responses can prepare you for that. Bennett has at his command an arsenal of avant tools, which he is very adept at using. Exactly how this was composed is, I think, far less important than the result. The faint ghost of linear narrative is present but disrupted, a reminder that the glassy surface of any processed and packaged discourse – now picking up Bennett’s reference to water – conceals a churning ocean of contradiction beneath. The poem itself winds fluidly through instances of crystalline clarity, to cloudy impressionism, to metalanguage.

The suggestion of a unifying factor as traditional as the self is present, although tenuous. The “ferris wheel,” wordplay that transmutes a carnival image into a far more menacing specter of an iron wheel, provides a unifying structure. Imagery, wordplay, and disruption serve to remind the reader that the poem is language on the page. Bennett is far from the first to begin fragmenting words at the beginning and end of lines (flo/ating), but his use of this radical prosody here is an indication of the merging of vispo and more conventional verse. Shattering words (and syntax) to glean something of their true essence, their visual existence as hieroglyphs, their sub-syntactical systems, is a gift of vispo. In other places, the poems are semi- concrete, such as “Kcen”:

blood neck heap neck stone

neck lash neck lot neck

sink neck boat neck tool

neck bat neck foot neck

chore neck lamp neck claw

neck itch neck doubt neck

gash neck glove neck stink

neck dog neck enter neck

fool neck rub neck hash

neck dry neck sot neck

meat neck mute neck slash

neck met neck slant neck

I was very pleased to see Neolipic received the endorsement of none other than the reclusive Jake Berry who at great personal risk and with extraordinary courage brought vispo to the deep southern states. Jake says, “Don’t be a sap. Download it!” Do what the man says. He’s done the hard time. He’s serious.

- De Villo Sloan

[John M. Bennett]

hey de villo, this is a fine and interesting commentary - espec. interesting to me is that you relate it to my (and others) vispo, something i wasn't particularly aware of doing, tho it seems to make sense

Thank you!
john