The work-stomach is linked to our esophageal highways and commuter rails. This network draws us down channel; no escape is possible. We submit to our consumption, and we also consume. These fantasies are fantasies of our lived reality: an endless parade falling into our wide-open mouths. Think of the mountains we have ripped open; we are ravenous and aroused. For Marx, the vampiric owner “consumes the commodity” of our labor, and he swallows us whole. 

---

 

As a seed gives way to roots to stem, poet Ian Hamilton Finlay’s life work took on dimensions far greater than its humble origins suggested. Finding the page an unsuitable setting for his efforts, Finlay spent decades in his creation of Little Sparta, a five-acre garden in the Scottish lowlands. Inscribing his words into stone sculptures, he gave new meaning to the term concrete poetry. Over time, upwards of three hundred pieces were scattered throughout the greater composition along with paths and pools, flora and forest. While the scene may conjure a sense of pastoral frivolity, assessing Finlay’s work reveals philosophical contemplations and a rhetoric contentiously aimed at various institutions. No idyllic oasis, he viewed Little Sparta as a political provocation, observing, "Certain gardens are described as retreats when they are really attacks."

Of a reduced scale but similar intent, Philip Sorenson’s New Recordings documents his attempt at assuming a radical posture via the act of gardening. Through agrarian labor, a clearer sense of time emerges, revealing the slow and ever-unfolding cycle of nature’s manifold phases. This awareness allows for a deeper understanding of the gardener’s role in a corrupt system beyond the greenery they sustain. Sorenson explores his place in a racist, misogynistic, and capitalist structure, as well as its effects on his mental health and the restorative calm provided by acts so simple as witnessing the “sounds of a wasp hitting a leaf with its wing.” Another New Calligraphy is proud to share this collection in a rare polychromatic presentation, featuring supplementary materials exploring its many organic and manmade themes. 

---

 

Everybody / should be throwing up all of the time," insists Philip Sorenson's incendiary and tender second collection Solar Trauma, a book that defies category in deference to the "uncontainableness of things." Sorensen writes to expose classification's errors and terminate endings: "to reject the premise that space is ever empty or divisible," to "reject purity and elsewhereness." Like the wails made by a hand trembling over the theremin, Solar Trauma's musical forms and anxieties slide and swerve.

 

Unflinchingly fretful and frequently hilarious, these poems enumerate the radial, radical horrors the body can endure and inflict: "and when I cease // . . . // I become the body / from which I believe I already act // and split and split again / a dehiscence a thing a skin // essentially a constellation of threats." This body of concern has no limit: think The Thing meets critical theory meets parenting meets polar devastation meets the internet; think of how to let anything go: "how can we get rid of this thing can we just throw it away what happens to it when // we do."