Ten Walks/Two Talks

Below is part three of the year-anniversary book discussion series.  See part 1 (Molly Bendall & Gail Wronsky) here; part 2 (Alan Semerdjian) here.  Now on to part three!

Jon Cotner & Andy Fitch:: Ten Walks/Two Talks

Two things to mention before focusing on the book.  First, if you haven’t signed up for a UDP 2010 subscription like I have, you are making a mistake.  Because if you did, you’d already have read this book when it came last week and be just as impressed by it as I am.  Second, I’m apparently in the midst of a love affair with the collaborative book.  This book.  The Bendall & Wronsky book from Monday.  TOA‘s chapbook from Dan Beachy-Quick & Srikanth Reddy.  The feature project from Christopher Schaberg & Mark Yakich that just got pub’d on TOA a few minutes ago.  And, if we could time travel to the future, yet another book I’m going to be talking about this week.

Each of these collaborative projects approaches its dual authorship in different ways.  I have not confirmed this yet, but Bendall & Wronsky’s book seemed to alternate between two authors (I’m guessing that Wronsky had the verso side and Bendall the recto side), or at the least followed two distinct formats on each page, resembling to authorial constructs.  This format will be similar to the aforementioned-future-book-discussed.  Beachy-Quick & Reddy and Schaberg & Yakich performed a less divided co-authoring.  In neither work can you distinctly and clearly make out the dividing lines between one’s work and the other.  While discussing the chapbook with DBQ&SR, they both claimed themselves to have forgotten any dividing lines, although each wrote distinct lines.

Jon Cotner & Andy Fitch’s book confounds identification within either of these models.  The book follows two formats: a series of walks, which are the first and third sections of the book; and a series of talks, which are the second and fourth sections.  Immediately this seems to indicate that the project follows the (presumed) dividing line of Bendall & Wronsky.  Though the narrator of the walks is somewhat obscured, combined with the talks and some shared facts, it becomes clear that Andy is the walker.  So Jon is the talker, right?  Well, maybe not.  Though both talks begin with Jon speaking, neither talk comes from Jon’s perspective or in any way indicates that Jon is the ‘writer’ of the conversation.  Are the conversations real conversations overheard or recorded?

J: It got so cold, do you remember? And the next afternoon we hiked a mountain behind St. John’s but…

A: The sheet of ice…

J: often slipped because of ice, then called it a day.

A: We are going to climb up now. [Silence] Now – acoustics stay impressive here, but better at the lip of the stage.

J: Expertly designed. Our voices do acquire uncharacteristic fullness…

The conversations seem stilted and difficult to follow at first.  The line of conversation rambles, Jon and Andy interrupt each other, and they seem to only tangentially acknowledge the other’s line of thought.  This can’t be dialogue!  There isn’t a distinct purpose!  What does it all mean?!

But as these conversations are read, one becomes aware that these are really real conversations.  This is not a fictional dialogue building towards specific plot points, smoothed over, and rendered into perfectly placed ‘dialogue’ that is only a very distant relation to real conversation.  This is real conversation.  Or, if it isn’t real real conversation, it identifies the roots of the conversations that we do have socially: we don’t listen to each other closely; we drift off; we interrupt; we shift from one topic violently to the next.  Our conversations are a mess, and Andy and Jon capture that mess with perfection.

John Stuart Mill claimed that what constitutes poetry is that “poetry is overheard” (thanks to Andy Nicholson for bringing this up at lunch today!).  The conversations between Jon and Andy are truly overheard.  The second conversation begins in the middle of a statement:

J: … great returning to Union Square W.F. – the place where this whole project got conceived.

We overhear Cotner & Fitch in conversation.  We overhear the internal thoughts of Fitch during his nearly devoid of speech walks.  The book is part of UDP’s Dossier Series, which they identify as a series that “publishes works in the investigative mode, regardless of genre or format.”  The book is certainly investigative, and certainly takes advantage of the ability to sidestep genre designations.  The book is listed as being nonfiction/poetry, but this is not a book that, upon picking it up, one would readily identify as poetry.  But this is maybe what poetry should be.  There is a distinct desire to not create separation between the reader and the material, because the basic position of being an eavesdropper in itself puts the reader at enough of a remove.  We are interlopers, first as walkers with Andy, and second as we overhear his conversations with Jon.

Jon Cotner & Andy Fitch:: Ten Walks/Two Talks

Filed under: Poetry , Andy Fitch, Jon Cotner, One Year Anniversary, Ugly Duckling Presse