Chelsey Minnis

I got this bk from my girlfriend, Amy Catanzano. Chelsey & Tina Brown Celona are 2 of Amy's best friends. I'm reading 1 of Tina's bks now. "Zirconia" is probably the most sensual poetry bk I've ever read. Minnis is hyper-aware of color & texture. I almost HATE to do this but I actually ENDORSE this bk.

Lately, under Amy's influence & under the influence of some digging into my own archives, I've been thinking about how many different lifestyles & professions the poets I've known &'ve been friends w/ come from. Perhaps more than any other creative activity that I pay attn to, poetry is a sortof 'great equalizer' - being a poet cuts across all sorts of class lines in ways that're of great interest to me.

I skimmed thru other GR reviews of this bk. They're all? mostly? positive? Does Minnis 'deserve' this? One reviewer doesn't like Minnis's extensive use of dots - her ellipsi? ellipses? I like them. Ordinarily when words are spaced across the page in poetry there's just 'space' there. Here it's as if Chelsey makes the reader conscious of just how much space there is. As w/ zeros, the dots are place-keepers, markers. They make, for me, each of the words PLACED rather than placed. The number of dots between words may be 'arbitrary' rather than counted but they still connote, denote, note, jot.

When I read Chelsey's references to material, I KNOW what it's like to touch these materials, I know the sensuality of it. When I read Minnis' intense psychopathic violent fantasies, her masochistic frenzies, I KNOW what it's like to FEEL that intensely. What I DON'T KNOW is where Minnis is really at.

I hear from Amy that Chelsey no longer writes poetry. Did I get that right? Does she, to take a page from Amy, get off the page? Or does she only get off on the page? Or get off from the page? When I read: "..or a glass candy dish of semen.." what am I reading? Is it a sexual fantasy? Does she imagine milking a cock into a receptacle ordinarily reserved for party favors? Such eroticism is both delectable & dangerous. The thin line between lust & psychosis is a razor's edge here - as it quite probably is everywhere. But Minnis elucidates it much better than most.

& there's humor. "REPORT ON THE BABIES" is wonderful. It all adds up to a person hyper-aware of herself, her surroundings. A person who's really paying attn. Where does it stop? Where does it go? Where is it going? What are the limits of what she pays attn TO?

"The oxide of zirconium, obtained as a white powder, and possessing both acid and basic properties. On account of its infusibility, and brilliant luminosity when incandescent, it is used as an ingredient of sticks for the Drummond light" - en.wiktionary.org/wiki/zirconia

Minnis' bk illuminates alot w/ a bright white lite but she leaves, 'inevitably', alot unexplained too. For every thing she shines her lite on, she creates shadows around herself; pretending, in a way, to show us a hard look, she hides a soft vulnerable place in shadows that cdn't be as deep as they are w/o the contrast of her searchlight.

Every ellipsis tells a story that the fragments only hint at. They're like Armand Schwerner's Tablets.… (más)