I-Formation, Book 1
By Anne Gorrick
Shearsman Books (http://www.shearsman.com/), 2010

I-Formation is a book of genesis, a book of the Garden and of torqued archetypes. It is a book of the eternal present, a book of the bleeding moment. I-F is divided into 2 parts: “Her Site of Reversible Destiny” and “The Michelangelo Variations.”

“Her Site of Reversible Destiny” is made up of 9 months of garden poems: “The February Garden,” “The March Garden,” “The April Garden,” “The May Garden,” “The June Garden,” “The July Garden,” “The August Garden,” “The September Garden,” “The October Garden.” Very early on in “The February Garden” Gorrick writes:

A garden’s borders are its thoughts
It should feel like a separating world
and we incompletely still inside that

and at that point, on the first page of the first poem of the first book of a long project, I feel excitement and know that this is a book I need to read.

“The Michelangelo Variations” constitutes a virtual sculpture garden. Its poems are called: “Pietà,” “Creation of Adam,” “Creation of Eve/The Crucifixion of Peter,” and “Night”. “Pietà” right away instills in me an association with Jean Luc Godard’s great film Hail Mary! Especially in passages like this one:

Mary sits in her dull world
(the beginning of turn one)
Dress pulled up
The digestion of driver
God’s whore
Knuckle-rage at humanity’s insectal drive
Blood lifts to the ears first
Cars the sound of torn aluminum and sleep
disappear into dust

I-Formation is an extremely rich book which contains over a thousand lines of flight. I’ve read it a first time and know that I’ve only begun to read it. It is a moving, beautiful and extremely thoughtful work of art. This is one of those books which will change someone’s life.