James Belflower
Commuter
ISBN: 9780967985473
15 dollars

Parallel lines meet in infinity. Paralleled lives meet in eternity or right here in the poem. In the inbetween-ness, the Barzakh, that is the poem. Or in the silent white space that separates the narrative-fragments on the page. And the strangeness of the “it” that is questioned in turn questions Mallarmé’s insistence that everything is meant to wind up in a book. What Belflower’s work seems to point to is the fact that “it” leaks — out of the book and into the world, and from the world into the book. What is at stake here is circulation: of people, of words, of love, of blood — printer’s bleed & terrorist victim’s blood —, of reading that turns into writing and vice-versa. This book of multiple narratives and troubled typographies, which “may be incompletely / confused”, asks you to be a (not so innocent) active performer as much as a reader. Take the risk. --Pierre Joris