StarCat/CatStar

with molding his own linguistics, a sort of Chomskian poetics, where our
brains are already hardwired with the template of such a feral vernacular,
and Heller is just teasing it out of us.
Each poem in this section begins with a word from the title, and it
moves sequentially. For example, some of the lines begin, “moreover &
besides furthermore is no longer preposterous bearing deceased
decadence”; “hardly original in his approach to procedure”; “sometimes
you just have to step back a grain gain lawfulness”; “if ever you take a
notion/lubricate with lotion”; “of if as pertaining to equality equidistance
equilateral quasimatter”; and so on.
Each word spawns a new thought which races the poem forward in a
dizzying motion, in a never-ending speed-induced tango across the floors of
infinity.
Sections three through five are titled, “Corner of ____&_____,” “Four-
Play” and “Gerundial Geist,” respectively. The corner poems investigate
intersections between, among other topics, seemingly antithetical ideas,
such as “Corner of Propaganda and Philanthropy,” or related emotional
activities, such as “Corner of Ponder and Brood,” where “gestation” is
“pensive/like/ fish/glued/to a malevolent tide.” The four-play poems are
each – you guessed it - four lines, and explore mundane or minute abstract
matters (parsimony, distances, realism, wilderness) in mock matter-of-fact
or even deadpan ways:
relationships are composed of compromise. compromise entails
giving in or giving up. elasticity is a prerequisite for compromise.
compromise sucks.
The gerundial poems contain gerunds as the instigating lead-ins, as
in “calculating sulk on dismissive freeways,” which imagines “ a drone in
the garden of conspiracy,” and also in “cultivating lachrymal,” whose “in
skeletal Unclutter this Nepenthe” culminates a brief series of inquiries
about underdogs and outlaws.
If all of this is making your head swim in amused bemusement, you
might be relieved to know that the next section, “Accidentals,” proclaims
not to follow any particular pattern, but rather, is a collection of random
“restlessnesses” plucked from the archives of Heller’s documents.
The problem is, these poems ultimately don't provide any respite
from the madness, despite the earlier perceived promise. Indeed, the verse
in this section elevates the sense of lucid lunacy, as epitomized by the
lengthy, restive, tonally capricious, “The Infra-Intra-Ultrapolational
Migration.” This quasi-prose poem not only quotes Billie Holliday lyrics,
but it manages to reference Rothko, children coloring, Zildjian Cymbals,
money markets, cannibalism, suicide-bombing, democracy, ornithology,
verb conjugation, Pound, operas, meter, horses, coupons, laundry, Matisse,
among many many other disparate topics – and yet, they are all credibly
interconnected via Heller’s magical locution.