Amuse Bouche
by Adeena Karasick
Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2009; ISBN 978-0-88992-604-3; 107 pp., $19.95 paper.

Born in Winnipeg, Adeena Karasick now teaches poetry and cultural theory at City University of New York. She describes her work as "marked with an urban, Jewish, feminist aesthetic that continually challenges linguistic habits and normative modes of meaning production. Engaged with the art of combination and turbulence of thought, it is a testament to the creative and regenerative power of language and its infinite possibilities for pushing meaning to the limits of its semantic boundaries." In this, her seventh book, she succeeds in pushing that meaning beyond those boundaries, and in the process destroys those self-imposed restraints.

Sardonic glint in her eye, she opens the mouth of this book wide using 16-point font in the first 'thing' encountered: 'Reader Safety Information Care and Use Guide: Criteria for Readers.' The word 'thing' is the only applicable word to describe what confronts the reader, Karasick having moved beyond the simple categories, the genres, into which writing had once comfortably been divided. Is this a poem? Is it prose? A flight manual? All three? How does one categorize a piece of writing where the first thing one notices is the diagram of an airplane and then proceeds with the following words:

Welcome to the new Amuse Bouche 2009. The moment you step inside, you'll notice a host of exciting features; a more spacious linguistic interior, oversize syntactical fonts and bigger trajects. Sleekly designed grammatical frisson showcase a luminous new socio-semiotic palette which features a mood-altering system on all pages; an exciting sonorous service feature for close readers. (7-8)

Karasick has used Daphne Marlatt's technique of alliteration and internal rhyme, assimilated within that the mannerisms of bp Nichol and Charles Bernstein, and infused a bit of the self-deprecating humour of Erin Moure to create a poetic identity that is undeniably hers. Just to add more spice, Karasick has peppered this prose with various pictograms lifted from various airlines' flight manuals.

She also likes to dredge popular culture for objects she can find, applying a populist approach to T.S. Eliot's admonition to steal from the best and transforming it into 'steal from anyone you can.' Take the title of "Sure Plays a Mean Pin Ball: A Syllabration," a use that would cause Keith Moon to squirm amongst the worms wishing he had thought of this first. Or the words on p. 17:

Ubuhubrub
Pingpong singalong
bhangra singsong trickster tagalong
Tictac flogalong suck my dickalong
Headstrong dipthong
Succulent truculent opulent
Bingbang googlegŠnger bling slinger gangbang

And that's only the first stanza.

But now we get into the meat-and-potato of things--the title poem "Amuse Bouche," dedicated to Chef Rossi, whoever that may be. This is a protest poem disguised as an East Indian menu: "yeah, I'll have a plate of artillery shells, with a / zesty bomb-water pottage, a fuzzy naval (base) / with an umbrella of Arab allies" (41). Of course, she cannot resist eroticizing the poem, something she does exquisitely well: "So, just take your explosive liquid / and smear it all over my / sweet sweet sweet peace, heavily decorated and all trooped out / hot 'n beefy like a gaza strip / sirloin broiled over a burgeoning cease fire." In 'I Got a Crush on Osama', she takes this eroticizing to heights no proper Jewish woman would be associated with:

So, forget the romantic flowers
why don't you fly into MY Twin Towers
Hide out in my dark cave
This is what I really crave
Inside me, make a Holy War
Lemme be your taliban whore (61)

Some may consider this a little over the top, but when you're writing a satire on the Obama Girl's song "I Got a Crush on Obama" while attempting to find your way through the emotions the bombing of the Twin Towers has unleashed, and you just happen to be a poet with the imagination and creativity of Karasick, you have to unleash your sensibilities so that others will understand that what is written is a farce--and a hilarious one at that.

Another writing is displayed in script: "Rules to Text By or Rules of Textual Engagement." There was a text from the 50s that informed a housewife how she should treat her husband--greet him at the door after work with a martini and a negligee, etc. Karasick has turned this kind of text into a dating guide with a twist (lemon?):

Looking at a text first is a dead giveaway of interest.
Let it look at you.
Make that text feel that you are unattainable,
that you are fulfilled and functional and happy without reading it,
That you are perfectly capable of living with or without it.
You are not an empty vessel wishing for that text to fill you up--
to entertain, illuminate or transport you. (71)

Karasick continues to be one of the best experimental writers around. She is also a performance artist and has turned several of her pieces, including the latter two cited, into videopoems, which can be found on YouTube. She has also become a ring-tone on a cellphone and a song in a Japanese karaoke machine. She has taken poetry far beyond any semantic boundaries, shattering them in the process and opening up new territory for those brave enough to follow.

John Herbert Cunningham is a Winnipeg writer. He reviews poetry in Canada for Malahat Review, Arc, Antigonish Review, Fiddlehead and The Danforth Review, in the U.S. for Quarterly Conversations, Rain Taxi, Rattle, Big Bridge and Galatea Revisits, and in Australia for Jacket.

Buy this book at McNally-Robinson Booksellers.

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