AD INFINITUM by P. INMAN

CRAG HILL reviews

Ad Finitum by P. Inman
(if p then q classics, Manchester, England, 2008)

Into the Breech: P. Inman’s Ad Finitum

We are nouns who need to know where verbs go, if verbs go. We are verbs who yearn for predicates, completion, for resolution. P. Inman, for decades, has teased and torqued this genetic compulsion for order.

In Ad Finitum, where absences reign, P. Inman fractures

In his use of word particles, verses partitioned by horizontal and/or horizontal/vertical axes, P. Inman maps

Forcing us to play with gaps, to fill in silences, to bind fragments, pushing up through the page’s attenuated skin, P. Inman urges

literature’s .

Marooned?

In severing the front and back ends of words, P. Inman democratizes

No status quo, but

a.
quo.

In blocks of text, rigid stream of phrases, rubbing up against similar and dissimilar phrases, P. Inman builds

mind’d;

)ementalisms;

P. Inman’s fractals

                      surr.
                      ound.
                      ings.
                      upon.
                      foot. lace.
                                            verp.

Slowing down speeding up, P. Inman erases

With no beginnings and ends—a perpetual middle, a process of process, P Inman’s poems argue against

it’s like Rothko

(ipsis.
           a                       state of
turn of                       syllable in
consist                       to what
crunch                       extent does

Flash, phosphene, memory scattered on tips of tongue, the writing resists

Requiring an archeologist’s patience, ability to envision and construct a whole from a few shards, P. Inman’s poetry re ards, the knowledge and pleasure polished in the eces

particle speech

An electron microscope bearing down on the dictionary, quirks of words, quarks, uncontained by human constructs.
Bird call. Bird cull. Bird cells on the windowsill.

elses
what
does
that write
into
sum
per in
           fr
           or

Jazz phrase/s. Raise. Imerge.

P Inman’s connection’s

P. Inman’s erection’s

each sound put it
of withers for me
………………………..
is it one word or
none of the rest

s                       i
t                       t
a                       s
t                       s
e                       h
d                       a
n                       p
e                       e
s                       w
s                       a
w                       x
a                       e
s                       s

Breaking the yoke of the horizontal, the cognitive limits of syntax, P. Inman defies

Urban sprawl, wall to wall media, personal and impersonal, hooded by our electronic devices, the spaces and interstices, the grooves and gaps of these poems deconstruct

no one at least to the writing

some footnote into structure too much
                       hide word carlights

the name of the thing the verb was
                      thought for outside

writing in the short sense underline furred though
                            wool vim listen matter

makelessness

Maker and made, observer and observed, outside and inside, P. Inman invites

eninsula                       glimpse
distance

P. Inman provokes


*****

Crag Hill's latest book is 7 x 7 (Otoliths Press, 2010). With Nico Vassilakis, he is editing The Last Vispo Anthology, with over 130 contributors from over 30 countries. He teaches English education at Washington State University.