Illuminations ‘in Wake of the Virus’: Complimentary Commentaries
Karasick, Adeena. Ærotomania: The Book of Lumenations. New Orleans, Lavender Ink, 2023.
Karasick, Adeena. Ouvert, Oeuvre: Openings & Touching in the Wake of the Virus. New Orleans, Lavender Ink, 2023.
Adeena Karasick’s latest offerings, Ærotomania: The Book of Lumenations and Ouvert, Oeuvre: Openings & Touching in the Wake of the Virus, provoke one to ponder life before, during, and following the global COVID-19 pandemic. Both collections shed light on revelations gained throughout the dismal period in human history. Nevertheless, as opposed to a eulogy, these volumes offer renewed and illuminated commentary on contemporary culture during, throughout, and ‘after the virus.’ Indeed, Karasick’s characteristic weaving of media, ecological and poststructuralist thought with threads of Jewish theology, syntactical coloratura fireworks, clever and often provocative wordplay, and transmedial expression comes to the fore in both the volumes under review.
Despite the intertextual thematics, both works offer a very different experience for the prospective reader, performer, or listener. Indeed, the experience of reading Ærotomania: The Book of Lumenations made this reviewer recall some of my prior work on medieval musical manuscripts in grad school. Indeed, the Old Hall MS (a collection of early English polyphonic music), for example, is organized less according to form and function—as the literate mind would see it—and more akin to what Elena Lamberti has described as a mosaic in reference to the retrieval of the medieval structure in Marshall McLuhan’s The Gutenberg Galaxy (2011). With no table of contents to guide the reader, the form of the volume compliments its content in the immediacy of the reading experience; an experience augmented by the additional YouTube video performances of several of the poems from Ærotomania. Particularly notable is an excerpt of the title poem Ærotomania, Checking In 2, and the 5-part Eicha suite which is now a 20-minute Award-winning film featured at numerous International Film Festivals. On the other hand, Ouvert, Oeuvre: Openings, with its wry subtitle, Touching in the Wake of the Virus (A Pandendum), presents itself exactly as advertised, containing only the poems named in the title. The volume is itself a work of art with Karasick’s poetry beautifully choreographed by Warren Lehrer—and it features a QR code in the back matter granting access to Karasick’s oral performance of the poetry via a SoundCloud link adorned with music by Frank London who worked on Karasick’s previous work, Salomé: Woman of Valor (2017). His work on Ouvert, Oeuvre: Openings & Touching in the Wake of the Virus is enthralling and the resulting engagement via new media once again offers new vectors of experience to Karasick’s work.
As previously noted, the reader encounters no table of contents to light the way, no literate aperture to the structure of Ærotomania: The Book of Lumenations. The unsuspecting reader is launched at once into the maelstrom of the codex containing a variety of poems in addition to the titular two which are presented in the reverse order suggested in the title, bookending the volume. Beyond the already boundless structure of the work—reinforcing my previous medieval musical reference and echoing Karasick’s impressive credentials in media ecology—is the collection of paratextual video poems available on YouTube. Karasick’s work tells stories, provokes questions, and probes culture via a variety of media.
The press release for the volume as a whole notes that the titular The Book of Lumenations, “takes as its jumping off point, the Biblical Eicha The Book of Lamentations, and through reflection, deflection, refraction and the fracturing of language, homophonically re-situates the original text to the present epoch, exploring how darkness is a form of light, and in rupture, there is rapture.” Indeed, Karasick attempts “to reproduce the sound, rhythm and syntax of the original” (Pilshchikov 56) while changing the text itself. Three points stood out to this reviewer.
First, in Eicha II and IV, one is confronted with two instances of creative typography through which connections are intertextually established across the poems. Most of the five sections of the poem are presented in relatively simple typesetting, the text dancing across the page. However, Eicha II begins (on page 11) with a passage set in a completely different typeface and colour:
Important to note is that that the final two lines appear inverted and arranged in such a way that they mirror—or, perhaps more aptly, echo—the preceding two lines with the truncated final line placing emphasis on an emergence to light, implying the first mention to be an emergence from light, echoing the overall themes of emergence and arrival, poignant commentary given our global emergence from the pandemic and the subsequent ambivalence, both physically and psychologically. Eicha IV features a slightly less elaborate typographic signal to the reader although its effect is no less substantial. Indeed, concluding the section in large, bold letters the reader finds the curious word play “AS THE BAN PLAYS ON” (19). The paradox, of course/, is that a ‘ban’ implies the cessation of activity; yet, the ban itself continues. This is but the first instance of Karasick’s probing of the paradoxes of arrival, and as we will see later, the impossibility of touch. Both typographic emphases hint towards the larger context of COVID-19 while providing clues to Karasick’s larger analytic and explorative purposes.
In the conclusions of Eicha II, III, and V there are direct comparisons of light to darkness which, in turn, illuminate the perspective of night. Eicha II concludes, “And behold, the stretched vestige of sprayed hunger / whose singeing fingers devour / In the petulance of choked zones / slain in the scored synchrony of / Slung slaughter / summoning as though it were a feast day / sprawled in the dandle of the rippled signs / chorused dawn” (12-13). Eicha III concludes, “Cast your mask upon me / Water my flowing head – and cut me / in the dripping petulance /of curled indices / in the call of farce / You have seen the ringing dalliance /seen the silty ode of fitful defiance /ground in the ferocity of mourning; /as you police me in the milk of daybreak” (16). I see no irony in the fact that both Eicha II and III end with references to emerging light, with—in Eicha III—hints of notions of control. Eicha V, which effectively concludes the poem itself, ends with a passage spatially arranged on the page to emphasize the contradictions throughout:
“Through light of fat language / The light of stretched testing, widening fear / The light of untidy probes which smell like /
gags/
thievery/
acrobats/
dancing bears/
Pass through me/through the light of the light/of the distance screaming/in the nostalgia of the present” (25).
Emerging, or, arriving, through the “light of the light” to “the nostalgia of the present” could be taken as criticism of the process of learning involved with surviving a global pandemic only to be left in a post-pandemic world longing for return. Nevertheless, in all three cases, the emphasis is placed on light and arrival, prefacing the overt themes of the latter titular poem in the volume, and forcing the reader to consider the illumination of the night, probing the ambivalence of the shades of grey that lay between black and white, night and day, fact and fiction, self and other.
CODA: When the Caesura Screams, Talmudy Blues II: For Michael Wex, House of the Rising Son[s], and Checking in II
Separating the ‘main features’ are indeed a variety of closely related works that seem to bridge the subject matter of the “Book of Lumenations” and “Ærotomania,” granting method to literate madness in the form, construction, and function of the volume. The ‘ban’ does indeed play on in the first of which, “CODA: When the Caesura Screams.” It begins, “In the eros of aching ethos / the caesura screams – -” (26). A somewhat cryptic opening, these lines foreshadow the notions of connection and identity construction explored later in “Ærotomania.” Indeed, in the midst of longing on behalf of questionable authority, it is the space between words, between take off and arrival, that speaks volumes. The conclusion of the first section reads “screaming in the improv / of illiberal ardor,” (27) clearly commenting upon the halt, cessation, and ultimately clumsy journey through the p[BAN]demic.
The connections to pandemic politics are made all the more evident as the reader arrives at “Talmudy Blues II: For Michael Wex.” Given that Wex, a prominent Toronto advocate for Yiddish language and culture, offers walking tours of the Kensington Market neighbourhood, the post pandemic perspectives of the work speak volumes more. The typography of this particular poem emphasizes pandemic topics such as Clorox (re:Trump) and harkens back to notions of disinformation mentioned throughout the Book of Lumenations: “These words are closer than the appear” (31) with a 3D foreground and accompanying shadow harkens back to notions of distance, claustrophobia, closing, and openings that mark the two volumes.
At first glance “House of the Rising Son[s]” appears to be a commentary on patriarchy. However, taking into account Karasick’s characteristic wordplay and invocation of pop culture, we see that rather than a commentary, the poem is an expose, unveiling patriarchal content across medial vectors, ultimately concluding “i’m still betting on the house.” (33) This statement implies not submission but active, playful, and polemic participation within patriarchal structures. Composed through the Trump era, the poem truly speaks to the horror and atrocity of deep fake culture marked by that “not so very, very very fine house” on Capitol Hill.
The press release tells the reader that, “in exquisite full color, the ‘Ærotomania’ section explores how the airplane as an erotic theater, a social text of secret motives, is structured like a language. As both a love letter and a lament to the airplane, it speaks to ways both individuals and meaning get transported to multiple and sometimes unexpected destinations; and how, like language itself, the airplane becomes a symbol of hope.” Preceding the poem is a quotation from Marshall McLuhan: “The airplane is an extension of the entire body” (Marshall McLuhan, Extensions of Man). Let us take a brief layover, given Karasick’s immense credentials in the realm of media ecology, to see what else the electric guru had to say on the subject with consideration to the poem.
McLuhan tells us that “Just before an airplane breaks the sound barrier, sound waves become visible on the wings of the plane. The sudden visibility of sound just as sound ends is an apt instance of that great pattern of being that reveals new and opposite forms just as the earlier forms reach their peak performance” (McLuhan 12). It is this constant process of de- and re-composition—though in this case—of the self that takes centre stage throughout the poem. However, this cyclic process of fragmentation and re-integration is likened to the very medium through which the poet (primarily) speaks:
“The airplane is structured like a language
And we are the letters reassembling
in a shifting ensemble;
illicit and clandestine sequestered in the curved body
of arced crevices, potence, platforms, portals,
promise
we are the floating signifiers
flying through a body of conventions
volatile and unspooled, looping” (51)
To put a fine point on the poet’s exploration of our selves vis a vis language reflected in the structure of the aircraft, one finds typographically highlighted directly following the above quote “According to the Digital Equipment Corporation in many aircraft, the rightmost seats have letter designations HJK, skipping the letter I,” (51) ironically exposing the impossibility of the self as imposed by print media environments via comparison: “the very body of the airplane highlights subjectivity / as a spectrum of differential r/elations” (52). Indeed, the vessel of the airplane and the spatial arrangement of subjects within becomes an elaborate metaphor for the ‘differential r/elations’ of language.
As we have already noted, Karasick’s mosaic organization displays the electric symbolic form described by McLuhan. However, her notion of touch is interrogated as a) language vis a vis the airplane and its poetics and b) the mask and post-covid considerations c) sexuality and liberation vis a vis notions of constraint within the post-pandemic process of departure and arrival:
As an elaborate site of limits, em/braces, pat-downs,
buckles, straps, masks,
the airplane establishes itself as a polyamorous
space of fetishistic excess.
And through the libidinally vertiginous, erotic mirroring
of tops, bottoms, bodies and belongings
blurred between seeing and being seen, seeing into;
in public space
In addition to commenting on restrictions within boundless electric space, the passage recalls the frequent recourses to darkness and light explored throughout “Book of Lumenations.” We are compelled to see light in darkness which in the concluding poem has effectively been summarized as ‘shade.’ Indeed, themes of departure and arrival, darkness and light, proximity and distance, unify the otherwise boundless mosaic of the codex, echoing McLuhan’s commentary that the “airplane.. permit[s] the utmost discontinuity and diversity in spatial organization” (McLuhan 36), a media ecological symbolic form brought to the fore in Ærotomania: The Book of Lumenations. The questions of touch considered within the fuselage of the aircraft are, however., explored further and in greater detail in Ouvert, Oeuvre: Openings & Touching in the Wake of the Virus.
As opposed to the mosaic structure of Ærotomania: The Book of Lumenations, the bi-partite title of Ouvert, Oeuvre: Openings & Touching in the Wake of the Virus fully encapsulates the content of the book itself. In the back matter of the volume one encounters a QR code granting access to a vocal performance of the work by Karasick, accompanied by music composed by Frank London. The verbiage suggests that “after you’ve read (quietly, or not-so-quietly performed) these two poems yourself, we encourage you to read them again while listening to the recording” (backmatter). The practice of private, silent, reading is a relatively recent phenomenon in the history of literacy. In the medieval world the norm was to read—or more aptly—perform texts aloud. Despite the practice having largely faded among contemporary readers, All three vectors lead to surprisingly different results.
The reader’s first point of engagement is with the physical book itself which is “offset printed, smythe sewn, hardbound with cloth and paper on boards printed by hand with metallic foils” which the makers tell us is “made to last and feel at home in your hands” (Backmatter). Essentially an artist book, Warren Lehrer’s visualization of Karasick’s poetry guiding the reader’s gaze across the orchestrated page, Ouvert, Oeuvre goes beyond conventional silent reading. Reading the poem aloud immerses the reader in the syntactical content as well as in the cadences and rhythms of the poem. Still, my oral recitation paled in comparison to Karasick’s performance augmented by London’s music.
The recording begins with the opening preamble of the poem recited by Karasick with no musical accompaniment:
“And in the opening of the opening the unnerving specter of a specter /
of a return to all that can never be returned /
the opening represents a kind of iterability /
ground in infelicities, corruptions, eruptions, delays–/
a circumambulating, a destinérrance /
amid the feasts of mourning” (np)
This passage is followed by a diagonal intersecting with the name of its author, “I always dream of a [o]pen that would be a syringe Jacques Derrida”. The citation from Derrida firmly roots this work in post structuralist thought
The subsequent poem is structured in seven separate entries, each treated with a musical setting. Following the introduction, we hear a chime from what seems to be a percussive triangle and a slow crescendo of a somewhat dissonant drone cradling and augmenting the reading of the poem. Section II of the poem augments this drone with a horn playing in relative harmony over its discord. Section III features a Schönberg-esque opening gradually giving way to a relatively calm treatment of the drone lacking a discernable solo instrument. The woodblock percussion pointillism that opens section IV gradually returns to the drone which unifies the poem as a whole. This drone carries on through section V and returns to a pointillistic texture before reaching a caesura at Karasick’s words, “Opening is an event” (np). A smooth and discordant solo horn guides us through section VI, erupting into a full compliment of horns in cacophony, leading to the relative silence cushioning Karasick’s pronunciation that “the words are opening” (np) and ultimately ending with a chime like the one that opened the performance proper and sonically delineates the pauses between sections of the poem.
As the book lacks page numbers, London’s use of the chime to delineate caesuras between the sections of the poem grants the listener a moment of contemplation much akin to that of turning the page only to find a blank one when reading the book silently or out loud. Such an example could be found between entries IV and V. Be it the chime or the typographic caesura, Karasick’s poetry is not just meant to be heard, but as both media of transmission demonstrate, experienced, considered, and reflected upon. Moreover, in entries I, III, and VII the letter O is given specific typographic treatment. In I and III the letter appears physically bolded amidst the creative typesetting, yet in in VII the O is replaced by a black spot akin to that introduced in V whereby a black spot surrounds the word “Event” in the clause “The Opening’s an “Event” “in white echoing the beginning of VII in which “Open me” within the clause “open me from the inside” is encapsulated white on black.
Throughout these works, Karasick provokes poignant questions and does so through a plethora of media that involve the reader at a number media vectors. Indeed, Karasick’s work grants us a glimpse of our unmediated selves if we are to follow Marshall McLuhan, who wrote “The moment of the meeting of media is a moment of freedom and release from the ordinary trance and numbness imposed by them on our senses” (UM – MM). In their multimediality, intertextuality, and thoroughly provocative social commentary, Ærotomania: The Book of Lumenations and Ouvert, Oeuvre: Openings & Touching in the Wake of the Virus confront the reader with a thoroughly post-structuralist study of the circumstances of Western culture before, during, and after the virus.
References
Gordis, Robert. (1974). The Conclusion of the Book of Lamentations (5:22). Journal of Biblical Literature 93(2), 289-293.
Karasick, Adeena. (2023). Ærotomania: The Book of Lumenations. New Orleans, Lavender Ink.
Karasick, Adeena. (2023). Ouvert, Oeuvre: Openings & Touching in the Wake of the Virus. New Orleans, Lavender Ink.
Karasick, Adeena. (2017). Salomé: Woman of Valor.Toronto, GapRiot Press.
Lamberti, Elena. (2011). Not Just a Book on Media: Extending the Gutenberg Galaxy. The
Gutenberg Galaxy (pp. xxv–xlvi). Toronto, University of Toronto Press.
McLuhan, Marshall. (1964) Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York, Routledge.
Pilshchikov, Igor. (2016). The Semiotics of Phonetic Translation. Sutdia Metrica et Poetica 3(1), 53-104.