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28 APR/MAY 11 #227BOOK REVIEWSThe difference is between a matted tangle anda single thread picked from the knot. In this firstcollection, Juliana Leslie plays in that space—between palimpsest and list, volume and line—with ingenuity and vulnerability.Nicole Trigg is a poet, bookbinder, and co-curatorof the CROWD reading series. She lives in Brooklyn.Montgomery Park, or OpulenceKarinne Keithley(53rd State Press, 2009)review by erica kaufmanMontgomery Park, or Opulence is at oncearchive, image, window, play, novella, poem,portrait, museum, ballad, and more. And, inconsidering Keithley’s work, in book form aswell as in its live production at The IncubatorArts Project in November, one can’t help butmarvel at the sheer number of things it managesto do and enact at once. I want to refer to MontgomeryPark as a composition—in the musicalscoring sense, but also in the way that GertrudeStein spins over through and around the termin “Composition as Explanation.” Stein writes,“The composition is the thing seen by every oneliving in the living they are doing, they are thecomposing of the composition that at the timethey are living in the composition of the time inwhich they are living.” This connection betweentime and composition, living and recursivity, visualas verbal, is investigated through Keithley’slexical constructions of space and place, andsaluted in the subtitle, “an essay in the form ofa building.”But, what is Montgomery Park? A quick searchindicates that it is many places, none of whichare nearly as interesting as the one Keithleybuilds—a space of “opulence,” but not in thetypical rich, monetary connotations of the word.This Montgomery Park is a work that allows readersand viewers to luxuriate in what Keithleydescribes as “the idea of a room and makingevents in a room.” And, these rooms are overflowingwith content—left alone with this bookone hears a wall speak, bears witness to thetransmission of a number of oral histories,partakes in the cataloguing of event, memory,art, and enters into a film. She writes, “maybewe could clarify the environment with a themesong” (10). Keithley creates a new kind of interdisciplinarity—anall-encompassing architecturethat elegantly houses this plethora ofworks. She writes, “Measuring use is difficultmeasuring uselessness is even more difficultespecially working across species” (7).The first chunk of the book consists of a speechfrom a “goldfinch wall,” an invitation to partakein a “welcoming dance,” a “card catalog,”“song,” and then “three histories,” followedby a “case study,” a “guide” and the introductionof a doctor. The text is full of active nouns,spanning centuries, geographies, posthuman.I’m reminded of Joan Retallack’s essay, “Essay