Figures for a Darkroom Voice by Noah Eli Gordon
and Joshua Marie Wilkinson

Reviewed by Christopher Vera

ISBN-13: 9780977901951
ISBN-10: 0977901955
Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2007

Figures for a Darkroom Voice is a sometimes difficult and sometimes brilliant collection of poetry. Several of the pieces have a photographic theme or element to them that fit the title perfectly.

The poets have a very still-frame way of looking at—and describing—their world. For example, “Sparrows shoot over the white earth” uses truism in a unique way to view absence:

Winter turns birds into a bird-shaped absence in
the air…

Several of the poems are quite experimental in a way that some may find brilliant:

tipping speech a gentle cavalier ruin honored to call hello

telescope in trees hello trees in windshield hello

traipsing hello offhand memory library

Some of the (mostly prose) poems in the book remind me of the old Mad Libs I used to do as a kid. You may recall the game where the reader starts with an incomplete story and asks other participants who have not seen the story for nouns, adjectives, and adverbs in order to fill in the gaps. When read aloud, the completed piece incorporates these randomly chosen words. Here’s the beginning of one such poem that gave me this feeling:

I made the movie you have been falling from for months now.
Smoky tar might tether you to the ground, but it won’t tell you
which direction your donkeys face. You see, you are the man
weaving noise from the red radio after its dainty refinement
orchestrates a disbelief in electricity.

The poems are quirky and highly imaginative. Some of my favorite images from an assorted selection of pieces: “A child is two parts wonder, one part glass…,” “Bright as a white octopus…,” “…an engine of bees.”

Several of the poems were quite literally one-liners, the kind of notes one might jot down as an inspiration for a larger piece:

A thief studies a crowd like a camera

or

a slow dance like someone opening a melon

Also in the book are several still-frame and abstract sketches by Noah Saterstrom. Many of these drawings have the same surreal feel of the poetry that surrounds them.

Figures for a Darkroom Voice won’t be everyone’s favorite book of poetry. It’s not an easy read. But if you’re a fan of experimental poetry, particularly experimental imagery, Figures might be a work of art worth taking the time to let develop.

Visit Tarpaulin Sky Press on the web at http://www.tarpaulinsky.com/.

Prick of the Spindle Poetry Editor Christopher Vera is fascinated by the foundations of our universe: the natural, unnatural, the supernatural, the fantastic. He explores these elements in his poetry and looks for it in the writing of others. His work has appeared in Ship of Fools, Apex and Abyss, Heliotrope, Mobius, the Magee Park Poet’s Anthology and others. He is earning an MFA in Creative Writing through National University in San Diego, California. He can always be found at www.mysticnebula.com.

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