The Case

ISBN:1-882022-36-X
TITLE: The Case
AUTHOR: Laura Moriarty (O Books)
$11.50
Excerpt

Description: The Case, Laura Moriarty. 128 pages. $11.50.

"The Case is a master work. Deceptively quiet and contemplative in its tone, The Case is searing, lush, austere, tender, loving and terrifying not by turns, but at once, all the way through and all the time. Laura Moriarty has for years been one of our finest poets and now she takes us to a new level. In the deepest recesses of the real, it’s impossible to escape life itself as it faces absolute limits." — —Ron Silliman

"The Case, besides being a mystery to be solved (where is the dead beloved, what happened to him?) and a literal case or box containing items (as with Duchamp’s Boxes) pertinent to the larger work (the ‘wedding’; or past and present lives) also strikes the reader as a private enclosure in which the poet confronts herself and what has happened. This space is sometimes theatrical or artifact-like, sometimes inclusive of the natural world; real objects and present experience can take part in the confrontation. Experience is encountered not described, the present is what it’s like when it’s happening even if it’s pain. Though The Case is a private domain it isn’t exclusive: the poet is alone thinking, yet others feel nearby in their warmth. The Case is appropriately muted, but not reticent. Its colors seem wisely chosen. It’s full of light, ocean light, house light, the light of a shadow puppet show. The subject of the book isn’t at all darkness, it’s the peculiarly lit and peculiarly gracious space in which rituals of loss take place."
— Alice Notley

"The Case of Laura Moriarty succeeds to awake by night. It is made for cutting. He dies on her birthday. She is the detective. The peeping occurs through the holes. We take pictures. The destroyed place is beautiful."
— Bill Luoma

 

“The book is in the box.  There is, on the glass table, a book in a box made of objects.  The objects are not memories.  They are the reduced and generic elements of a temple.”  This third collection’s deliberate but shimmering architectonics continue the project of Moriarty’s Like Roads and Symmetry, where all meaning is virtual and half a castle built on air may be as good as a whole.   …The Case’s four sections display a stunning variety of formal method, and, at the same time, a torrid consistence of intellectual attack.  “Varieties Of Sky” modulates between Ron Silliman-like sentence structure and a viscous listing, most successfully in the poem “Casual Power”” “toast/ sugar/ villain/ visitor/ A catalog of boxes delivered at work.”   Much of the second section “The Beautiful House,” with lines and lyrics of varying length and gravity, practically pirouetics off the page.  The section titled “Ghost Atlas” displays a remarkably changeable relationship to desire, and calls on pop-literate allusions from Robert Smithson to H.P. Lovecraft, La Jetée to Bladerunner.  What may at first seem cliquey turns generous, extending to literary contemporaries like Kit Robinson, Norma Cole and Kevin Killian.  The poem teems with New York School posse curiosity, making this one of most tactile and exciting collections to come from San Francisco in years.  Publishers Weekly (January 25, 1999)

Excerpt

Triumph These plant epiphanies This residence underneath Stemmed and read Someone at this feast Is dead already Is not Me with no meaning Is not love Is Leaving life behind Red on my hands crushed Seeds loosely red Read on my chest and heart Dark No longer No drama presented No law of silence Needed She was the secret In this place he was Event without article Not a personal god Went off without her Without content A stagehand carries a mirror through. It’s supposed to be hell but is just the neighborhood. A crew is here full of the illusions of their story. We don’t know them. Neither I, wandering, lanterns suspended inappropriately above me, or you, freshly dead, would care to know. Only later can one see them, only not them, but the absent performers. It will be a false memory pieced together. If time stops pounding the ears like a heart loose in the body for a moment while we watch, it will be a success. "The triumph of death" we might call it in spite of its real name. So we can call it out. Through the window Not falling thrown With sudden force The household Out Tables stained chairs torn and Wobbling anyway taken By strangers in trucks Used up Lamps broken notebooks Ink smeared Face like the stain Of ashes ashes on the roof Of course this tomb Is a house This airless metal Number burned circle Doused and scattered Plain granite Hell is heaven is home This goddamned leaking sieve of a pen like a slow detonation. If I could just get the right dress I could get it off me. Go back and keep it from exploding. The pool of saliva that was left like a last clear thought. Tip of the hat. Final handshake shaken repeatedly. Spit like acid. A solid lake in a terrain which can be picked up and examined. The world as model of the world. Life as ending. The sun on my table burning as I fall, as I wake up. It goes without saying I loved you more than god "I am cancer. I am death." Neither of us wrote that The face wrapped The eyes gone Stuck at the beginning A mask clings to your face like an animal An ordinary thing like laughter Sleeps here In a dream my reader tears open my stomach the better to read and I think, "Good, I’m finally dead or asleep and am cheerful because change is the only way I can tell time now." In fact, I am laughing because I don’t know what else to do with my breath. There is so much of it. All I know. What’s here is there. Keeping up with the air. With hidden noise Black leather and glass Brushed every day like teeth Fresh widow unfastened Reading is breathing

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