Soul Data

The best poetry I've read by a living poet. I've read these poems over and over. I particularly like, for example, the sestina, A Variation on Themes by the Doors. It's work on paper, but unlike so much new poetry, it is not paper thin. It is lyrical, inventive (without being eccentric), evocative and dense with meaning and mystery. It is emotional and yet the author never spews or sprawls. He is pointed, and controlled without ever being rigid. He uses traditional forms effectively, without ever being pedantic, employing them to make the greatest use of what they might have to offer. In a world where so many don't even know what the forms are, this is especially welcome. Such inventive and rigorous poetry, poetry that works the mind AND the soul of the reader, is rare indeed.

In the mid '80s, the Cabaret Hegel, a reading and performance series was held in an old boot factory in Seattle, Washington, until the structure was torn down to make way for a major freeway interchange. Fortunately, the Cabaret Hegel has been remembered more poetically by one of its participants, Mark Svenvold, in the opening sequence of his first book, Soul Data. But to say that this homage consists of a series of sonnets is just as inadequate as my flat statement of the cabaret's history. Poetic forms do not restrict Svenvold; rather, they provide a framework for displaying his insight and playfulness. There's nothing stodgy about "Sex Fiend Sonnet," for instance, and "Variations on Themes by The Doors" is an intricately written sestina. Poet and critic Heather McHugh selected this book for the Vassar Miller Award, in 1997, and the two share a deft juggling of language that never overwhelms the content. "I'm not here to double your entendre or your fun/ though, trouble is, trouble (both ex- and in-/ tends, virus-wise, to spread out everywhere," the fiend explains, and the new crowd at the Comet Tavern, the setting for "Variations on Themes by The Doors," is "black-booted, blue-eyed, baby-faced & beer-fisted." Svenvold turns his descriptions, puns, rhythm, metaphors, and occasional surreal twists to such varied topics as Thelonius Monk, pornography, baseball, bad dates, and the death of parents. One of the three poems called "Desperate Message" begins, "There hands have found in each other/the impossibility of bodies," and these hands end up, "like tourists without visas, cameras without film, busily, purposfully/taking picture after picture after picture." Fortunately for us, Svenvold has caught these poetic visions to share.

SOUL DATA by Mark Svenvold is a poetic elegy to place, time, and family.  In EVIDENCE, "...liberty--/ how most of us have used ours up and carry/ what's left as we carry our bodies,/ pouting and untenable, from place to place--".  And in SEX FIEND SONNET: "the wreck I've caused I am."  Serenades, augury, and elegies are all part of the mix here.  Svenvold's western voice is as clear and as erotic as that of Hugo or Wright. The subject throughout this wonderful first collection seems to be the endurance of language and identity between the needed mountain and the histories of clouds, waves, and stone.  SOUL DATA is a book well worth the read.Scott Hightower ([email protected])

Mark Svenvold's new collection of poetry, entitled appropriately, Soul Data, is a rich tapestry of material and etherial images (lumberman boots "hobnailed and treble-stitched", "air like silk drawn into the lungs," "mist of angels on the head of a pin"), of bold and subtle twists on traditional poetic forms (sonnet, villanelle), of personal and universal histories and geographies. Svenvold's debut soliloquy is really more of a symphony, a harmonious blending of different voices and sounds (from the wind in the trees to "chantey and anchor clank") that do not so much transcribe as transcend the data hovering somewhere in the fields and folds - and along the many shores - of the soul's memory. As both a professor of literature and poetry, and an amateur poet, I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in discovering what is both new and timeless in the poetic tradition spanning the United States.

Since you posted the terrible Kirkus review (always wretched)you need to hear a few words from Seattle's "Stranger" written by Jan Wallace, since these words express my sentiments precisely : 'Heather McHugh had her wits about her when she awarded the Vassar Miller Prize to Svenvold's "Soul Data," a book of poems that transforms form from the inside out. I've followed Svenvold's poetic progress for over ten years -- his work has only gotten more and more intense and precise. Sonnets, a villanelle, a sequence of couplets -- formal structures here are made to hold and expose what, without that girding, might explode. Svenvold, a homegrown Seattleite, takes as one theme the Cabaret Hegel, a reading and performance series which local poet Stephen Thomas ran in the old Buffalo Shoe Factory for four years in the '80s. His series of 11 sonnets, "Death of the Cabaret Hegel" (previously published as a chap book), has lots of local interest, including a Jimi Hendrix graveyard trip, plus lines like "As the sun sets the body becomes liquidier,/until in darkness all is sloshing and carrin' on,/the body's jellies a prelude to the sobbing that's to come--/but what of it? That's the way we like it here,/a steady rain stipulating the water,/constancy copied and dopplered into open/space, like promise or premise to build upon." Svenvold takes delight in linguistic play, and manages to intensify and make tangible his emotions rather than eclipse them with his smarts. This is a rare bird of a book. The atmosphere, the language, the mood (there are three different poems entitled "Desperate Message..."), the use of form, and the motional intelligence behind these poems have everything to recommend them.' From this reader's point of view Svenvold's is an orginal voice and Kirkus (as usual)hasn't a clue what they're reading.