Publisher's Weekly Reviews Lisa Robertson's Cinema of the Present

We can't wait, October! That's when Lisa Robertson's newest masterpiece, Cinema of the Present, will appear on bookshelves at the very smartest of bookstores. From PW:

In this non-linear, self-referential book-length poem, Canadian-born poet and essayist Robertson (Magenta Soul Whip), who currently lives in France, asks, amid a host of queries and interrogations, “What do you believe about form?” From the beginning one must be prepared to “move into the distributive texture of an experimental protocol,” an initially disorienting procession of questions, observations, and images advanced by Robertson. The work’s use of non sequitur is reminiscent of David Markson, as is its invitation to readers to draw their own connections between the poem’s major themes—description, memory, prosody, alienation, and gender, among others. Robertson’s lines, in alternating roman and italic text, flow unceasingly, without overt indications of breaks or stoppages, perhaps providing a response to her question, “How else do you construct a pause in cognition?” Many lines throughout the work are repeated once later in the poem, though never at any regular interval and always with the text style transposed. This shuffling exposes the banality of déjà vu, how shifting the context changes the nature of expression. Or, as Robertson writes, using the language of epigenetics, “You are a position effect.” Is her poem, then, a kind of internal dialogue? [...]

Find out, and more, at PW.