Edge and Fold

Victor Schnikelfritz wrote the following in The Great American Pinup (http:\\greatamericanpinup.blogspot.com/2007/04/paul-hoover-edge-and-fold.html): The title of Paul Hoover's Edge and Fold suggests that the lines of poetry that run through the book approach the limit of the page (the edge) or are cut off in mid-utterance by a fold in the page. In either case, the contemplative fragments are assembled in small piles and often feel like cut-ups. However, the fragments themselves are often lent an aphoristic quality as well. Yet the term aphorism doesn't seem quite apt either. The assembled fragments that beg for contemplation are more incomplete, more like koans. Yes, in Edge and Fold we have an admixture of cut-ups and koans. This characterization is somewhat disingenuous, for it is quite reductive. The piles of lines that are assembled in the first section of the book (entitled "Edge and Fold" and which is comprised of 49 short contemplative pieces) do not just stand alone as lines that either do or do not enjamb with the following line. The short pieces are often whole unto themselves with a movement that carries the reader safely down the page despite some daring leaping from rock to rock. The contemplative space carved out by these short poems is not just a space of objects and abstractions. Often literary or other cultural figures make their presence felt within the almost prayerful space created. During the first ten sections alone references to Fassbinder, Miles Davis and Zeno's arrow are made. These references make the poems seem like prayers made to or for the benefit of others, other cultural figures whom Hoover has deemed worthy of letting them camp out in his head. The question remains what kind of god might listen to such utterances. Certainly it must be a god somewhat interested in puzzles. VIII edge and fold the raiment of the field the harrow breaks it down harrow of sight with its articulations nothing is in passion when all is in belief the world keeps turning to face the burning sun The voice that is speaking here (if one would even venture to call it that) seems to be devoid of passion. Nothing seems urgent about its articulation. All desire seems to have been vacuumed out of the world. Desire and its compulsion for a speaker to interact with the world have been displaced by belief, a mental operation. Yet mysteriously the world keeps turning in this state to face the sun, the source of all life, the source of all desire in the universe. The poem seems to be some sort of hazy commentary on the mortal combat between desire and belief. The theme of the difficulty in trying to connect to the substance of life also occurs in segment XI. XI he loved the mechanisms of wire and device tipsy monuments gadgets of craft and this of all things the most uncertain an effortless pursuit of everything he knows along the coast of meaning