StarCat/CatStar

The Carefully Constructed Chaos
of Heller Levinson’s Wrack Lariat (Book
Review)
By Alison Ross
Just thinking about writing a review about Heller Levinson’s Wrack
Lariat frankly induces a bit of panic in me. Heller seems to inhabit another
dimension altogether, a frenzied domain where language and ideas trippily
transcend time’s pesky constraints, where they are given free reign to be
as “unhinged” as they were innately meant to be. And although “unhinged”
is perhaps the paradoxical antithesis to the word “hinge,” at least as Heller
means it, the two words seem to have the same connotation.
Because, you see, Heller is the pioneer of Hinge Theory. As I
understand it – and sometimes I think I do, and other times I am sure I
don’t (Heller’s ideas are both elusive intellectually and yet intuitively
sound) – Hinge Theory is a poetics that posits that words and ideas “hinge”
on intrinsic associations, and these associations, once activated, propel a
poem forward. Language acts as an artistic equation. Language is
malleable mathematics, if you’ll permit the oxymoron. With Hinge Theory,
language is both technically precise but also cosmically expansive.
(Of course, Heller may disagree with my flaccid interpretation of his
grand theory, and I’ll just have to live with it.)
Wrack Lariat seems to take Hinge Theory to unfathomed extremes.
When I reviewed Hinge Trio, which was a collaborative work between
Felino Soriano, Heller Levinson, and artist Linda Lynch, my brain felt
mightily befuddled with the labyrinthian language. After reading about