Revelator

                                            

Five words to a line, Ron Silliman’s Revelator is immaculate verse.  I read/heard no false notes.  Which can’t be said, written or implied very often. 

I love Silliman’s poetry.  Silliman, though, is a Figure—one of those judgment making trendsetters who can intimidate potential readers.

He famously scared off some with his excoriations of SoQ (School of Quietude) poetry.  Lamentations about dead deer on the side of the road don’t cut it for him (not that he doesn’t care).  He’s all about-- if not the “music of meaning” a la-la-la  Charles Bernstein-- the surrealism of everyday life.

It’s a surrealism expressed through micro shifts of attention.  Every sense perception bleeds into another.  And that is a method in a five word line.