Whelmed
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
What might a word lose – or gain – without its prefix?
Each prose poem in Whelmed features a word that has been unhinged from its prefix, allowing new meanings – radically unfamiliar, yet uncannily intimate – to emerge from these prefixless word deposits. Part prose-poem sequence and part encyclopedia of unpredictably irregular terms, Whelmed is at times deranging, almost disturbing, sometimes detached, and always joyfully rupting.
'Addictionary of words lopped off from their prefixial syllables, this lightful pendium mises hours of giggles and a joyful sire to copy ad finitum! So much pleasure! So much verbal legerdemain. So spiring! Can’t stop/won’t stop reading, jotting, sharing. Constraint at its most unconstrained.'
- Maria Damon
‘With Whelmed, the Woman in the Shoe (who has too much to do) and the stoned, fixed priestesses of Apollo invoke the order of an alphabet of prefixes. Enjoy the maze – take with you two string balls, one of truth and one of belief. Her mastery of language makes poetry free.’
– Maxine Gadd
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Poet and novelist Markoti 's fifth poetry collection (following Bent at the Spine) is a glossary of manufactured definitions fashioned by detaching prefixes: compulsion is rendered pulsion, mischievous becomes chievous, and so on. With sections grouped under those excised prefixes, the book is playful and exuberant, each entry a prose poem unto itself. It is at its best when playing up form and presentation. In sections such as "Dis-," in which left-justified text is abandoned for variable, at times chaotic typesetting (appropriate for aster, combobulated, and traught, among others), and that effect is played up stronger still across the lone page of "Inter-." The sections "Ins & Outs" and "Pros & Cons" are identical in their presentation of dual columns--allowing different readings by scanning as columns or as collated text--up until the final, centered line of "Ins & Outs," which lends grounding to its liminality. "Or: Iterately," a long prose poem, anchors the book near its close. Markoti is even kind enough to provide a "Dexed" section at the end for selective re-reading. This work is recommended as a most excellent poetic dictionary.
