EILEEN TABIOS Engages
Lost Sonnets by Catherine Vidler
(Timglaset, Malmo, 2018)
What can poetry do? Many things, and certainly among them
is how poetry can make you think about matters that only a particular poem can
surface for you. Poetry, in other words, can open you up to new modes of
thinking/feeling/viewing/ … and hopefully then a newly-better way of living.
That last element is perhaps the hardest in this engagement … perhaps. But
that’s mostly up to the reader. In the beginning, the poetry first must do its
job of effecting change. By this standard, such is accomplished well by
Catherine Vidler’s Lost Sonnets--and they do so in a
moving way with a long-finish resonance.
Lost Sonnets’ title is intriguing. Before one actually
opens the book, one might imagine that these are sonnets that were created,
lost, and later rediscovered to be featured in a publication. However, reading
and viewing through the pages of 155 sonnets actually raises the idea that the
sonnets are lost and in search of a destination, including themselves as
destinations (for instance, that phrase “Know thyself!”).
(Thus,) appropriately, the beginning images are simpler
than the later images. For examples, here are the second sonnet and a much
later one. In both cases, one can discern the number 14, as befits the post-13th
century sonnet that incorporates 14 text lines.
As shown by the later image, the process also comes to
integrate color which would seem apt since self-discovery is complicated.
Between the above two images are a wealth of a variety of
sonnets which help give the impression of searching.
Here are two more examples:
It’s only upon ending the perusal of all 155 sonnets that
one realizes there is not destination-as-goal for which the sonnets searched.
To look at and, if so, successfully connect with a sonnet is to realize that the
lost-ness, the search, and the attainment (of some conclusion or epiphany) are
in each image. These lost sonnets are, in other words, both
question(s)-and-answer(s) embedded within the same image. That conclusion, as I
previously stated, is based on the reader making a successful
connection—Vidler-as-author, however, does not define what that connection is
supposed to be; the reader’s subjectivity is allowed to flourish (or not).
For example, for me, the third sample image gives an
impression of stitching—let me replicate the image here to ensure no confusion:
I get the sense of stitching due to the marks that evoke
needles with thread. So there is a stitching and what’s the result? Why, a
strengthening as indicated by the overlapping curved lines in the middle of the
image. Significantly, that band of curved lines is moving both upwards and to
the right of the page—this depiction of an ascending flow (versus, say, an unraveling
descent) would symbolize progress. Conclusion: if one (or more) works together
well with others, progress unfolds for happy or desired results. My thought
process along these lines (pun intended) is just an example of how one might
engage with, learn from, and then have something from which to act on in the
reader’s/viewer’s life (i.e. work with others).
Mine was a simple reading but I think is an example for
how, by allowing for such a reading, Vidler’s images become/are effective
poetry. In turn, Vidler’s sonnets show again (what I’ve long believed): Poetry
is not words.
*
Vidler does provide a useful essay about her process of
making the sonnets. It’s an illuminating addition and I imagine particularly of
interest to the geek in us who might wonder how she technically created the
images. Its placement after rather than before the sonnets themselves, though,
is fitting as her explanation is not necessary for the viewer to enjoy these
lost(-and-found) sonnets.
Because of the (abstract) nature of these sonnets, they
also lend themselves to multiple viewings for different responses each time. In
other words, Vidler has created a reason to keep returning to the sonnets—the pleasure
of the search need not end! Brava and gratitude, then, to the poet!
*****
Eileen Tabios is the editor of Galatea Resurrects (GR). She loves books and has released over 50 collections of poetry, fiction, essays, and experimental biographies from publishers in nine countries and cyberspace. Her 2018 poetry collections include HIRAETH: Tercets From the Last Archipelago, MURDER DEATH RESURRECTION: A Poetry Generator, TANKA: Vol. 1, and ONE TWO THREE: Selected Hay(na)ku Poems which is a bilingual English-Spanish edition with translator Rebeka Lembo. Forthcoming is WITNESS IN A CONVEX MIRROR which will inaugurate Tinfish Press' "Pacific response to John Ashbery." She also invented the poetry form “hay(na)ku” whose 15-year anniversary in 2018 is celebrated at the San Francisco and Saint Helena Public Libraries. More information about her works is available at http://eileenrtabios.com.
