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casparb's review
Here he is again Girls on the Run is not a collection but one long poem so naturally it feels rather cohesive so far as that exists for JA - but it's beautiful. If I do things right this summer JA may end up being my most read author ever he's damnably prolific I suppose writing a poem every day does that. Anyway. This is a great collection have a go maybe
grubstlodger's review
3.0
I used to suffer dreadfully from insomnia at university but since then have managed to find a way to get to sleep in double-quick time. What I do, is I make sure I don’t need a wee, I get comfy, I close my eyes and I watch the pictures. These pictures aren’t ones I consciously conjure, for them to work I have to take no ownership of them whatsoever; I shouldn’t try and put them in words, fix them in my mind or even acknowledge them, I just watch them and let them flow. This poem is a bit like that but with words and I let them flow in a similar manner.
A lot of the poem seemed to me about time. There were references to time as a concept but also many to seasons, to times of the day and to the movement of the sun. It seemed to me that time stopped a lot in the text and was rekindled like a fire. The characters in this (and there do seem to be some) have joy, they have fun, they have seasons in the sun. Time is also often linked to play;
“It was just play, they dreamed
tomorrow will be another day and different”
The act of playing stops time, or at the very least stretches it and pulls it into weird shapes, which it does in real life. You can play as a baby; an old man, a young woman, a game set in the future or one set in the past.. years can stretch by yet all fit in before being called in for dinner. That’s what this poem felt like to me, snatches of half-remembered play and memories swirling around each other.
I also know a little about Henry Darger and his work ‘In the Realms of Unreality’, which inspired this work - so there were times when certain images were clearly inspired from one picture or another. There are specific details like an oversized clock with the hands pointing at 5:30 which feel they are taken from a particular image. The poem also reminded me a little of when preschool children pick up a picture book and ‘read’ it. Unhampered by the words they voice the feelings of the pictures, describe what’s going on and frequently go on tangents.
The text was very slippery. There was a lot of playing with pronouns, the characters slipping between them in a swirl. Often the last word of a line meant one thing with that line, but meant something else if put with the line proceeding;
“All had come undone
from Brigit’s shorts”
-is the ‘undone’ here part of a cataclysm as implied by the first line or a wardrobe malfunction as implied by the second?
Usually, I prefer something that wants to be more clearly understood and this kind of writing is not my favourite. I tend to feel that I, as a reader, am doing all the work in this relationship and so resent the author. While I probably enjoyed their flow for the first 25 pages or so, the last 10 or so did become white noise. Perhaps I should have read one of the 21 chapters a day, and if I return to this book (which I may) that’s how I shall do it.
A lot of the poem seemed to me about time. There were references to time as a concept but also many to seasons, to times of the day and to the movement of the sun. It seemed to me that time stopped a lot in the text and was rekindled like a fire. The characters in this (and there do seem to be some) have joy, they have fun, they have seasons in the sun. Time is also often linked to play;
“It was just play, they dreamed
tomorrow will be another day and different”
The act of playing stops time, or at the very least stretches it and pulls it into weird shapes, which it does in real life. You can play as a baby; an old man, a young woman, a game set in the future or one set in the past.. years can stretch by yet all fit in before being called in for dinner. That’s what this poem felt like to me, snatches of half-remembered play and memories swirling around each other.
I also know a little about Henry Darger and his work ‘In the Realms of Unreality’, which inspired this work - so there were times when certain images were clearly inspired from one picture or another. There are specific details like an oversized clock with the hands pointing at 5:30 which feel they are taken from a particular image. The poem also reminded me a little of when preschool children pick up a picture book and ‘read’ it. Unhampered by the words they voice the feelings of the pictures, describe what’s going on and frequently go on tangents.
The text was very slippery. There was a lot of playing with pronouns, the characters slipping between them in a swirl. Often the last word of a line meant one thing with that line, but meant something else if put with the line proceeding;
“All had come undone
from Brigit’s shorts”
-is the ‘undone’ here part of a cataclysm as implied by the first line or a wardrobe malfunction as implied by the second?
Usually, I prefer something that wants to be more clearly understood and this kind of writing is not my favourite. I tend to feel that I, as a reader, am doing all the work in this relationship and so resent the author. While I probably enjoyed their flow for the first 25 pages or so, the last 10 or so did become white noise. Perhaps I should have read one of the 21 chapters a day, and if I return to this book (which I may) that’s how I shall do it.
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