2 out of 4 stars
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Ue by Ezra Stewart is a book of poetry, or more accurately, it is essentially one long poem broken into several fluid sections, with occasional bits of prose appearing throughout. The book starts with one of these prose sections, setting the scene with a mansion, a lost girl (with a lost mind), and a love triangle. The author immediately cultivates a mood of mystery and confusion, though the first two pages are generally coherent. This prose devolves quickly, transitioning into stream-of-consciousness verses that dominate almost the entirety of the rest of the work. Though short sections of prose sneak their way back in a handful of other times, most of the remaining pages are devoted to sometimes-rhyming poetry.
The poem (or poems?) are crafted in a unique experimental style, characterized by surreal and dreamlike settings, and whimsical rhymes and puns. The author takes many creative liberties with language, playing with sound and rhythm, and frequently using made-up words and phrases. He challenges the concept of a sentence, weaving verses out of unfinished lines and phrases (and even incomplete words). The result is that some lines of the poem are purposely abbreviated, some only one character long. One page within the book purposely contains only two words.
There is an interesting mix of influences within the language itself. Some of the words used in the poem are reminiscent of Old English, while others reference much more modern phenomena such as text speech (for example, using “u 2” instead of “you too”) as well as contemporary slang (like “bae”). The author explores rhyme by contrasting words that are spelled similarly but sound different (for example, words like “low” and “cow”) as well as words that are spelled differently but sound similar (like “go” and “sew.”) Certain phrases and combinations of words make repeat appearances – the word “no” appears dozens (if not hundreds) of times, especially throughout the first half of the work, carrying a mood of jest and contentiousness throughout the verses. Many lines of the poetry start with the word To, followed by a verb (to do, to go, to see, to do being the most frequently used). Later, the author creates patterns out of whole sentences, almost like weaving lines of words together to form a larger patchwork.
In all, it is very clear that the author put a lot of thought into crafting this book, and was willing to take many risks in releasing it for public consumption. Unfortunately, based on my personal experience of reading this book, I am not sure that all the risks were worth the outcome. Though it is obvious that the author has a comprehensive understanding of the various elements of poetry - enough to challenge them or reject them outright - the degree to which he does this seems to take precedence over the actual outcome of the words he has put forth. Often, the meaning of the writing becomes lost behind the convoluted wordplay, and the repetitive phrasing.
From the 300+ pages of choppy staccato verse, I was only able to glean maybe 2 or 3 pages worth of actual meaningful and memorable phrases, scattered throughout. The experience of reading this book is, I imagine, not unlike the experience of reading a very long Dr. Seuss book while heavily tripping on acid. At times the phrases appear to grasp onto a profound concept or metaphor, but in the majority of the pages, the meaning seems to hang just out of reach. I found this to be frustrating as I read page after page of nearly identical verse, wondering if there was intention behind it, or if it was simply a waste of my time. I got the impression that this book was created over several late-night sessions of furious inebriated typing, with little to no editing after the fact. However, it is possible that lovers of wordplay and folks who enjoy experimental poetry may find this a more worthwhile read than I did.
The verses seem to focus largely on the theme of desire, both sexual and romantic, and the concept of it being unfulfilled or unrequited. There are many sections laced with sexual language, as well as some profanity, so I would not recommend this for young readers. One particular phrase that appeared a handful of times stuck out to me as memorable; “I love you in a cavern way.” To me, these words (as well as a handful of other word combinations found within the poem) hold the promise of an enticing metaphor. Unfortunately, rather than exploring these vivid concepts or building upon them, the author leaves them and returns to the same kind of repetitive wordplay that appears through the rest of the pages. If someone could go through the book, pull out these several brilliant phrases and combine them, I believe we would be left with a much more powerful piece.
Generally, this does not appear to be a book that is meant to be read from cover to cover, as there is no progression of narrative from the first page to the last. The reader can flip to almost any page within the work and read a chunk of the verses to get a fairly accurate snapshot of the entirety of the piece. Within an individual page, it is sometimes possible to follow the author’s train of thought as he progresses through a chain of wordplay exercises, which I found to be one of the more interesting aspects of the poem. Unfortunately, the impression (or rather, question) that I am left with after finishing the book is “Why?” What is the lesson here? What is the purpose of spending this amount of time on an exercise that should probably have taken up no more than 2-3 pages? What did I learn from these hundreds of pages of words that my mind turned into rhyming nonsense as soon as my eye left the page? I have not yet come up with an answer, though perhaps what I learned was how to pick out the small bits of gemstone (or powerful metaphor) among the piles of refuse. I rate this book 2 out of 4 stars. It is a worthwhile attempt on the author’s part to challenge our established norms of writing, but not yet strong enough on its own to carry a message that warrants the time and patience it requires.
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Ue
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