Talking Poetics #15 : Eric Baus

Lately I will re-discover a file on my computer with a title that I don’t remember writing. Then I open it and re-work the contents into the shape of my current impulses and concerns. I think it’s fair to say that I work from a “scattering of notebook entries” but with an eye toward smoothing out the transition points.

I often write toward certain gestures that I’m using at the time and merge an older sensibility of mine with a newer one. For example, a while ago I wrote a poem called “Minnow Pulses” (link to poem in Jubilat http://www.jubilat.org/jubilat/archive/issue34/five-poems/ ) that is built of phrases containing a larger image embedded in a smaller image (“The ocean in a jellyfish. The sky in a cloud. The storm in a worm.” etc.) and I liked how clean and simple that form was while remaining evocative. After writing that poem I have tried to use that move here or there while also evolving in it different ways. 

There is always the danger of forcing the old fragments into a new shape in a way that feels too artificial. However, if I can trust the previous self enough to preserve some of the surprise that drove the earlier draft while also allowing it to drift in new directions, then I usually end of keeping the result. 

I have a file open on my computer now that is called “And everything and I started seeing” which is an echo of the final line of Frank O’Hara’s poem “The Day Lady Died” ( “…and everyone and I stopped breathing”) and probably is also influenced by the title of my friend Whit Griffin’s book We Who Saw Everything. 

The lines of poetry inside that file are in prose, and I can tell that some of them are collaged from previous poems that I’ve written while others borrow syntax from friends’ work or other writers. Inger Christensen’s book/poem Alphabet has been in the back of my mind for the past few years, and reading her work helped my write the poem “Minnow Pulses”, which I’m now using as a template to grow and graft new language upon. 

Eric Baus is the author of five books of poetry: How I Became a Hum (Octopus 2019),

The Tranquilized Tongue (City Lights 2014), Scared Text (Center for Literary Publishing,

2011), Tuned Droves (Octopus Books, 2009), and The To Sound (Wave Books, 2004). He teaches literature and creative writing at Regis University’s Mile High MFA program in Denver, where he is assistant director and core faculty in poetry. His latest is the chapbook Euphorbia (above/ground press, 2020).

Recent Reads: THE RAIN OF THE ICE by Eric Baus

THE RAIN OF THE ICE by Eric Baus

Published by above/ground press, 2014.

I’m as attuned to Eric Baus’ past work as I am to surrealism or Pauline Oliveros’ Deep Listening Institute, which is another way of saying I’m curious. Both practices, which seek transcendence through the dismantling of context, dutifully serve Baus’ approach on THE RAIN OF THE ICE. As such, these fourteen, conservative-in-structure prose poems are suspended in a volatile, imaginary world where creation is seething and smothered. Each entry acts as an origin but with subjects that often carry over; horses and pupae, like totems, reappear as distorted symbols in a codependent transformation. Attaching meaning to any of it is a daunting proposition, lest you run into a piece like this:

ECHO SOLVENT

There is no wind, no blood, no sun. There is no sleep.

Not water. Not air. No capital, corpse, or crops. There

are no wolves or waves. No negative rain. Nor blue.

Nor birds. No bodies.

Given that surrealism and deep listening practices better define what isn’t than what is, it makes sense that Baus would snatch up the last assumptions we readers could cling to. And with "ECHO SOLVENT", the storm that has raged in elements and animals throughout much of this chapbook is suddenly sucked into a pinprick on white, a vacuum of lifelessness. What’s left in lieu of context? What represents absence? Clearly the vague summary I’ve gathered for the purposes of this review will only get me so far. The good news is our groundlessness allows Baus’ crisp language to stimulate us more acutely and from unsuspecting angles.

LOST MOAT

The injured octopus commandeered my limbs. It

furrowed a crown of iron from its sponge dome but I

felt no cruelty in the creature’s cage. The wall of its

body was more an annoyed wave. I was being guided,

rained into a room where a tiny moon arose. I was

being aired out, not raided. I touched the closest

tentacle and felt a burned down candle. We were

sharing an urn that was groomed for the cliffs. Mute

and molting, we grabbed talons. We were born in a

town around the block from our remains. We felt sad

for our hands. We had loved our lost moat.

Each time I read "LOST MOAT" I come away with something new. Does it weave in and out of metaphor or subsist on several, metaphoric skins? Does it really matter? The uneven physicality and iridescent mood of Baus’ struggle proves that his surrealist streak treads with intent, discipline. There's compassion amid the violence, too. Another selection that resists obvious meaning but relishes the journey’s poetic choices is "ALPHA VAULT":

The pupa condensed its peels with plumage. It

unpacked an ambushed breath. It hid in the densest

passage, wearing out the ether inside a downed cloud.

There’s a metamorphosis happening, in all its damp and sour stages, and that’s the draw; the assonance, alliteration and partial rhymes, not whether the transformation pans out. In this regard, THE RAIN OF THE ICE argues for the separation between a strong voice and strong statement. Baus’ engagement is so authoritative, it seems secondary that many of his details fail to coalesce into anything definitive. (Definitive would be missing the point.) Those who crave a tidy conclusion at the bottom of each page may find the indistinctness frustrating but others will delight in the dreamlike manipulation lurking these unassuming skins.