{"id":169,"date":"2009-10-26T21:19:21","date_gmt":"2009-10-27T02:19:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fullofcrow.com\/crowreviews\/?p=169"},"modified":"2009-10-26T21:19:21","modified_gmt":"2009-10-27T02:19:21","slug":"viva-loss-sara-fran-wisby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fullofcrow.com\/crowreviews\/2009\/10\/viva-loss-sara-fran-wisby\/","title":{"rendered":"Viva Loss, Sara Fran Wisby"},"content":{"rendered":"

\""VivaViva Loss, by Sara Fran Wisby, reviewed by Paul Corman-Roberts.<\/em><\/p>\n

I have discovered, through a series of shoddily unscientific
\nexperiments,-none of which would stand up to a reasoned
\nscrutiny by a qualified professional, but which are none-
\nthe less extremely valuable to me-that the type of light man-
\nifested in boys, while it can be trained, prefers to play.<\/em><\/p>\n

From \u201cLight Gains Intensity As It Is Approached\u201d <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is a story told by guitar god Eric Clapton back in the late sixties about going to see an upstart blues sensation in a London club by the name of Hendrix. When Slowhand gets to the club, he is intercepted outside by a shell shocked Pete Townsend who informs Clapton that the both of them may as well take up selling door to door insurance. Clapton heads into the club for Hendrix\u2019 second set an concludes that Townsend overestimated their prospects.<\/p>\n

Sara Fran Wisby is one of a series of emerging talents (along with super prosers xtx and Mel Bosworth) who are starting to have this effect on the established war horses of the so called \u201cunderground\u201d literary scene.<\/p>\n

In the wake of diminishing attention spans & disintegrating dialectic it\u2019s not unusual for the poet and\/or prose writer to feel some angst about where their chosen mediums are headed.<\/p>\n

Wisby\u2019s recent publication from Small Desk Press, Viva Loss, is a Rosetta Stone of post-modern relationship politics, surrealism and Western mythology. Does all this sound too \u201cover-the-top?\u201d It\u2019s not:<\/p>\n

The stars are worse off. They\u2019ve got to shine and shine and
\nshine. I\u2019ve got pills and sleep and hope. They\u2019re all alone,
\nthe darkness pecking at them from all sides. I\u2019ve got electric
\nlights, umbrella, a tea kettle, a CD player, an Electrolux
\nvaccum cleaner from the fifties.<\/em><\/p>\n

Never underestimate the power of contraptions<\/em><\/p>\n

From \u201cHope and What Army\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Go ahead, laugh at me for saying this, but Viva Loss<\/em> not only points the way toward the future of prose poetry, but also for fiction and poetry itself. Keep laughing. I\u2019m right.<\/p>\n

\u2026What if I resisted you, if in dying I achieved the sort of pride
\nthat evaded me in life, what if I told you to go to hell, and take
\nyour nursing skills elsewhere, and leave me to die in peace, and
\nwhat if you didn\u2019t leave, and instead peeled the sheet gently back
\nfrom my body, and picked up a sponge and started washing me
\nwith it, drenching the fiery hollows, murmuring to me in a low
\nstrange voice you didn\u2019t understand, had never heard before,
\ndidn\u2019t know you were capable of.<\/em><\/p>\n

From \u201cHigh Drama\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wisby\u2019s \u201ctiny printed miracle\u201d (Stephen Elliott & he\u2019s right) is a work of transgression
\nthat transcends the \u201cconfessional\u201d ghetto; is a work of romance that transcends \u201cRomance\u201d and is a document of analogy, myth and surrealistic disassociation that transcends post-modernism.<\/p>\n

The world\u2019s tallest trees are underwater where gravity can\u2019t
\nget to them. They reach for a greenish blob of light, the mythical
\nsun, which none have lived to see free of its wavering veil, for as
\nsoon as they puncture the surface, they are painfully burned on
\ntheir uppermost new and tender leaves, and this kills them. It
\nreally does.<\/em><\/p>\n

The World Below<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Viva Loss<\/em> is a study in universal fragmentation. The book is presented in five parts: Parts I through IV and the \u201cAddendum\u201d (perhaps the crowning achievement of Wisby\u2019s imagination here.) But really part IV, a series of listed and continuous prose pieces, sets up the \u201cAddendum\u201d or \u201cglossary of (selected) terms, which in turn manage to unify the themes of this remarkable manuscript in the \u201cfinal\u201d list: femme couverte; finger; fuck; guilt, hardtack aka \u201csailor\u2019s delight\u201d, hegemony and homeopathy.<\/p>\n

Forms of listing or segmenting are rife through the first three parts of the book as well though, but Wisby\u2019s talent for the ringing line, more the signature of a poet, remains the cause this device she has chosen (wisely) serves. The end result is a series of modern fables, surrealist essays and dadaistic advice columns that come from a world we all recognize but cannot place, other than Wisby\u2019s off the hook imagination.<\/p>\n

The temptation here is to say that Viva Loss<\/em> single- handedly renders language poetry a curious dinosaur (LangPo already was that) and opens up future generations to a slick, stripped down version of really good literature that will make for fun, easy and convenient multi-media packaging because it doesn\u2019t require a huge attention span.<\/p>\n

But because Wisby\u2019s approach is that of the poetic, there is nothing simple or stripped down about this work, it simply appears that way, like a plump, non-threatening facebook quiz that clearly appeals to ones identified life choices. But the vision presented by the author here is whole and interconnected from piece to piece, and while a slick marketer might think it appropriate to add illustration to some of the more memorable images rendered (grotesque devils cavorting in the kitchen sink, a couple linked for life in a genital piercing circus act gone awry) the only image that matters is the cover\u2026a torn up boxing glove, indicative of a fight that hasn\u2019t always gone well, and also looking like its been abandoned in a desert hints at one of the main lessons in these pages:<\/p>\n

When the desert is lost in you, it sends out flags to other deserts. Hard crusts
\nof dry skin form along your outer ridges. Your moisturizer fails. People start
\nto steer clear of you, afraid that you will \u201csuck them dry.\u201d Only other desert
\npeople wander near, the ones who are further along than you. They wear their
\ndeserts on the outside. Wrapped head to toe like mummies in baroque tatters,
\nmoving their sandpaper lips in crass imitation of language. We know you,
\nthey insist. We\u2019re here for you.<\/em><\/p>\n

From \u201cDry\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wisby\u2019s piece \u201cDry\u201d ends there, but leaves the reader with the dangling, implied fear that maybe those other desert people really just want to suck out your remaining moisture, but also leaving open the possibility that maybe that in itself is some kind of victory or at least, not undesirable. Wisby smartly exploits the beauty of uncertainty in poems or flash pieces or whatever you want to call them, that while perhaps as dislocated in \u201cgenre\u201d as many of their landscapes are in \u201cplace,\u201d they are, in and of themselves, very grounded in what is universally human and surely real.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Viva Loss, by Sara Fran Wisby, reviewed by Paul Corman-Roberts. I have discovered, through a series of shoddily unscientific experiments,-none of which would stand up to a reasoned scrutiny by a qualified professional, but which are none- the less extremely valuable to me-that the type of light man- ifested in \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"yoast_head":"\nViva Loss, Sara Fran Wisby - Crow Reviews<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fullofcrow.com\/crowreviews\/2009\/10\/viva-loss-sara-fran-wisby\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Viva Loss, Sara Fran Wisby - Crow Reviews\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Viva Loss, by Sara Fran Wisby, reviewed by Paul Corman-Roberts. I have discovered, through a series of shoddily unscientific experiments,-none of which would stand up to a reasoned scrutiny by a qualified professional, but which are none- the less extremely valuable to me-that the type of light man- ifested in \u2026 Continue reading →\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.fullofcrow.com\/crowreviews\/2009\/10\/viva-loss-sara-fran-wisby\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Crow Reviews\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-10-27T02:19:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/fullofcrow.com\/crowreviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/vivaloss-108x150.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Elynn Alexander\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Elynn Alexander\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.fullofcrow.com\/crowreviews\/2009\/10\/viva-loss-sara-fran-wisby\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.fullofcrow.com\/crowreviews\/2009\/10\/viva-loss-sara-fran-wisby\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Elynn Alexander\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.fullofcrow.com\/crowreviews\/#\/schema\/person\/0c3e05436844453578a7b05a141b254e\"},\"headline\":\"Viva Loss, Sara Fran Wisby\",\"datePublished\":\"2009-10-27T02:19:21+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.fullofcrow.com\/crowreviews\/2009\/10\/viva-loss-sara-fran-wisby\/\"},\"wordCount\":1103,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.fullofcrow.com\/crowreviews\/2009\/10\/viva-loss-sara-fran-wisby\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"http:\/\/fullofcrow.com\/crowreviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/vivaloss-108x150.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Poetry\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.fullofcrow.com\/crowreviews\/2009\/10\/viva-loss-sara-fran-wisby\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.fullofcrow.com\/crowreviews\/2009\/10\/viva-loss-sara-fran-wisby\/\",\"name\":\"Viva Loss, Sara Fran Wisby - 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