Codify, cover
image by Irene Koronas for Codify (Ed
du Cygne, 2017),
HORNY
ATOMS:
A Review of Irene Koronas' Codify (Editions du Cygne, 2017)
By Fusiform Gyrus
CODIFY by Irene Koronas, 130pp, $15.00, Editions
du Cygne/ Swan World 4, rue Vulpian
75013, Paris
Sitting
down to flesh out a review of Codify,
one can easily imagine Koronas’ minimalist fragments travelling as posthuman
transmissions in an anomalous din through the dark of space. Erotic, visceral
and at times weirdly comic, this is a collection that evokes the calibre of juxtapositional
disjointedness so fondly remembered of the surrealists and so often emulated in
their wake;
26
four
foot cyclops
craving
entrails
strip
instead of seduce
perhaps
it’s all refrain
dirty
odd hacks
stuff
bra with newspaper
latex
neck sweater
wet
with mohair
and
neon ray gun
Koronas
marries this with an almost ancient lyricism, culminating in such a way as to affect
an overall anachronistic sensibility where imagery both common and esoteric are
jettisoned about the place tethered to shapes like a work of modernist art;
here, jagged lines and bold colours are replaced with a lexicon as refined as
it is seemingly cut-up, as nuanced as it is elemental—this is the crux of Koronas’
experimentalism; what some refer to as post language though is perhaps better
expressed as the simultaneous embrace of a litany of technique and voice, a
heightened sense of craft Koronas executes effortlessly throughout. Unlike many
so-called post langauge poets, Koronas embodies this approach so fully, so
vibrantly, she rises from the ashern deathbed
of postmodernism carrying her own unique tune;
74
hot
cuneiform on coins
text
and nohuatic
disco
pallisade
pours
ethylene
on
horny atoms
Part
of the book’s simple genius comes from its flow and addicting readability, as
if it were a longform work that has learnt to take ample breaths. Demonstrating
a keen compulsion towards strange, erotic imagery, Koronas writes,
25
upstairs
paint leaks
by
gash
neck
and rape
soft
incest roses
pour
arsenic
in
porcelain
finger
frag
rub
testis
to
spurt
Koronas’ deeply erotic-trangressive
work is far from trite retromanic pastiche echolaliac of the last century,
rather, it is unconstricted by what, as Koronas writes, can be seen as an ‘extra laconic hypersexual
skin’ (18, p.49), breathing
life into what is now ostensibly a fringe form—often dismissed as theoretically
fallow in a post-psychoanalytical landscape. By excavating the bones of figures like
Bataille, Rimbaud and de Sade, Koronas’ archeology finds a powerfully feminine,
post-beat voice that resounds with a modernist almost Pound-esque sincerity, conjuring
such lines as; ‘when hips
fall
over her face petticoats his head his mouth on her green lace dress spit on his
stamen’ (49, p.36); ‘in web stretch
a
terra cottar pot
at the bottom of my skirt’ (40, p.50); ‘swipe
his waist squash his cum blow her cuntif cool’ (47, p.126); ‘hike
up your spike you nasty whore master who rebels in my mouth’ (1, p.26), and ‘univited
fist thick with mucus tight genes imprison to bruise’ (87, p.53).
While
something could be made of the obvious non-linear sequence of these poems, as
affirmed by the book’s title “Codify”,
I find little argument for how this would add to what is, simply put, a striking
and deeply important work, one I am perosnally moved by as it represents a much
needed drive towards original, or more importantly; oringless, erotic poetry. This
is probably as good as it gets for the experi-eroticist community and what a
pleasure to read an author so outside herself!
