Murder Death Resurrection
A Poetry
Generator
by Eileen R.
Tabios
Copyright 2018 by
Eileen R. Tabios
Dos Madres Press
Loveland, OH
ISBN
978-1-939929-99-0
Softbound, 157
pages including notes & acknowledgements, no price given
Review by Zvi A.
Sesling
If someone could
wave a magic wand and give you the ability to write poems endlessly would you
accept the offer?
Nationally known
poet Eileen R. Tabios has created the nearest thing to the magic wand, in her
book Murder Death Resurrection or MDR.
This book belongs
to everyone, every poet in particular because Ms. Tabios has given poets a base
of 1,167 lines any combination of which may comprise a poem. Take for example
lines 367, 521 and 1078:
I forgot the
Bengal Tiger mimicking a helicopter’s dance (367)
I forgot fallen
olives discarded from those awaiting virgin pressings (521)
I forgot the
difficulty of ethics: how to rationalize when
what is good does
not give an advantage in a world you define
as alley? (“Can
you stop running if the monster does not stop
chasing?”) (1,078)
Perhaps another
poet would prefer to delete the first two words, “I forgot” as if it were just
a two line poem. I personally do not
believe one line can make a poem and by that I do not mean a 5, 8 or 10 line
sentence is one line. I simply mean one
line.
But I digress.
One can take the three lines change their positions, remove “I Forgot” and each
will produce a three line poem.
The genius of Ms.
Tabios is that she shows that this can be done with any – or as many – of the
lines as one wishes. Even a 1,167 line
poem is as possible as a 20 or 40 line poem or a five or ten line poem.
Ms. Tabios states
it thusly, “The MDR Poetry generator’s conceit is that any combination of its
1,167 lines succeeding creating a poem.
Thus one can create – generate – news poems unthinkingly from its
database.”
It is not conceit
but genius to have created the generator.
It is not an unthinking effort.
Reading and selecting the lines to be used is truly a thinking process
which makes the MDR even more fascinating and worthwhile.
Joseph Conrad did
not learn English until the age of 29 and yet wrote some of the best novels in
the language. Ms. Tabios, a Filipina, has in turn manipulated English to suit
her needs resulting in a poet who is one of America’s leading
experimental/abstract poets as evinced by her many books – more than 50 that
encompass poetry, fiction, essays and experimental biographies.
Here is a poem I
created from chained (successive) lines from the MDR, deleting the opening “I
Forgot” and using lines 231-234 the following emerged:
I defined empathy
through a bent spine craving
for an ellipsis
bulging to imply arrival, not departure or division.
The salty
pleasure of sister elongating pink necks
to snag
spotlights beamed from men experienced in the utter
aliveness of
dying
Painting a floor
red with my hair. I forgot back-
ing myself into a
corner: when you appeared to grasp my
throat, your
greedy footprints completed my painting.
Whispering “Stop
heavy. No such thing as a sonofabitch in turning art into flesh”
Often creating a
poem will express opposites or twins, depending on how the words are used, but
they will always create poems.
Finally, at the
back of the book is a useful “Teaching Guide & A Workshop Suggestion” which
includes study questions for those who teach or would like to teach poetry
using Ms. Tabios’ system.
Writer’s block is
a malady many writers encounter, and this book will assure poets in particular
as well as writers of short stories and novels that they will be able to
continue unblocked.
_________________________________________
Zvi A. Sesling
Author: The Lynching of Leo Frank, Love Poems From
Hell, Fire Tongue, Across Stones of Bad Dreams, King of the
Jungle.
Editor of Muddy River Poetry Review, Bagel Bards Anthologies Nos. 7, 8 and #12.
Publisher, Muddy
River Books
