Time Being
by Oni Buchanan
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Pub Date Oct 15 2020 | Archive Date Oct 15 2020
University of Iowa Press | University Of Iowa Press
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Description
Advance Praise
“‘After great pain, a formal feeling comes,’ wrote Emily Dickinson. In Oni Buchanan’s wrenching Time Being, a formal feeling comes not after, but during pain. The last, best resource for mastering overwhelming emotion is form, and here, Buchanan invents jagged, contrapuntal forms that allow her to paradoxically organize the unorganizable—the agony of grief. Buchanan’s trademark brilliant agility with language takes on a bleaker shading in these poems, as she interrogates how syntax breaks down or is broken down by transactions. But her wizardry keeps opening up small, tenacious, miraculous expanses of hope: ‘there is not one single wonderment left,’ she writes—but her book contradicts it on every page.”—Donna Stonecipher, author, Transaction Histories
“Like finely cut gems in startling, experimental settings, the poems of Oni Buchanan’s Time Being both attract awe and disrupt expectations. One part lamentation over love gone awry, one part comedy of late capitalism’s Orwellian absurdities, this collection of monologues offers us a world of jaggedly beautiful, bewildering forms: tours of robotically populated factories, stories of prosthetic mermaid tails, a stunning new take on Thomas Wyatt’s ‘Whoso List to Hunt.’ If Buchanan’s speaker knows all too well how corporate Darwinism makes us ‘understand the numbers are against [us]/the odds are against [us]’ she also recognizes ‘We//are each other’s/witness that we’re//alive.’ Full of mordant wit and hypnotic velocity, Time Being often takes us to a horizon we might recognize in the photographs of Hiroshi Sujimoto: facing the turbulent, primal sea, a figure confronts a ‘silence in the midst of a roar daring me to speak,’ and indeed, every poem here feels like a roaring, brilliantly managed dare.”—Michael Tyrell, author, The Wanted
“Each poem in Oni Buchanan’s Time Being is a solitary deer, ‘wild for to hold’ and charging into ‘the howling preamble to a hurricane . . . vault[ing] beach debris . . . white gates of bramble-reaches uprooted from the scrub.’ The wreckage is uncharted, prevailing systems range from inadequate to inhumane, and the instrument of direction is a ‘sextant // calibrated to a cruel / constellation.’ The book is a reckoning between the past and the present unfolding, the light diminishing minute by minute as the speaker, poised on the brink, finally confesses her impasse: ‘Everyone’s waiting for / me to act / and I’m waiting / for me too.’ One astonishment of these poems is how they invent new containers with which to calibrate an infinite sorrow and pain and wonderment, dividing this immeasurable quantity into precise and impossible units—one ‘imperial,’ one ‘cruelty,’ one ‘cosmic distance’—in an attempt to ‘achieve the / skill set blossom- / scatter fluency’ and collapse the distance between desire and its value. ‘The problem / is the scale // of the mystery,’ Buchanan writes—and spending time inside these singular poems, we too ‘sail a chambered vacuole to the cellular edge,’ the horizon of simultaneous, irreconcilable worlds.”—Allison Titus, author, The True Book of Animal Home
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781609387167 |
| PRICE | $21.00 (USD) |
| PAGES | 82 |
Links
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Joseph S, Reviewer
Time Being: Poems by Oni Buchanan is published by the Kuhl House of the University of Iowa Press. The Kuhl House Poets combine the best of dedicated craft and contemporary vision. This provocative series reawakens readers to a fresh consideration of the possibilities of language and feeling by publishing work that is formally and verbally inventive, adventurous work that takes its own path outside established routes of either traditions or experimental poetry. Buchanan has published three previous books of poetry, including What Animal. She is the founder and director of Ariel Artists.
Using split lines, gapped lines, and panhandled four-line stanzas, Buchanan creates poetry that encourages thought and depth. The capital letter of the physical "sentence" is buried in the midline, forcing the reader to process the differences in line breaks and complete thoughts. The result is a pleasant scramble to complete ideas and develop a mental picture. One of my favorite parts comes very early on in the collection:
and people half-assing | the beating down of some
representational animal | stubbornly
metaphoric animal | to achieve a low-quality
leak of generic | drugstore candy --
At the center of the collection is a long, twelve-page, sort lined poem that creates a rhythm of a freight train -- Strong, almost mechanically punctuated rhythm that pulls through the pages with precision and ease.
The collection closes with more traditional style poems of summer, warmth, gardens, and closes with the very touching title poem. Buchanan captures both poetry and experimental style in a near-perfect balance. An enriching read.
Available: 15 October 2020
Educator 667783
Oni Buchanan is a pianist as well as a poet and this comes across in her poetry. Using free verse, split lines and enjambment, the poems spread across the pages with ease. There is a mix of all sorts of subjects, some deep and thoughtful, which takes a while to comprehend. Others are light and jovial, which bring a smile to your face.
All in all a very enjoyable collection of poems.
Connie B, Reviewer
I am definitely not an expert on poetry; my interest in this form of writing is fairly new, as it wasn't something I appreciated in the past. However, I have learned to enjoy how poets can put so much emotion and experience in short pieces.
I was completely intrigued by the blurb for this book and wondered where the poet would go with such an interesting topic to explore. I wasn't disappointed. I love how the author brought so much to each poem.
I truly enjoyed this book.
Reviewer 193687
I did not expect to be fascinated by this poetry collection. Though it is quite wordy and descriptive, the poet’s vision gave me a pause:
“I am circling around a wound that is unhealable [...]
Elixir evanescences in near darkness while intimacy magnifies across receiving channels.”
A few remarks: I wished the poet had specified the Nigerian language referred to in one of the poems. As well, the term “revisionary history” didn’t sit right with me.
4 stars
With thanks to the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
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