Rose Maloukis, Cloud Game with Plums

Rose Maloukis’ chapbook opens with a Samuel Beckett quote: Dance first. Think later. It’s the natural order.

This chapbook is a 2020 pub with above/ground press.

Without jumping to the last page of the chapbook as I usually do, but judging this book based on the perusal of the first several pages, I can say with confidence that these poems delight in the experimentation of form.

The first poem begins with three lowercase O's aligned right and getting one space less right-aligned with each line break before the poem, two tercets, really begins:

I saw this on the
sidewalk
painted white

I took it as
a sign of
song

The next poem begins with three vertical lines, standing above three horizontal ones of half-equal length.

In the background of this review, I am listening to the 2024 remaster of Queen performing live in Montreal and thinking... this is very much a Samuel Beckett je ne sais quoi sort of situation.

“Twitch” and “A Form of Desire” are likely the most significant poems in this collection and I am judging by my lack of instinct on this.

There are also poems that are written out with margin-respective spacing, which is impossible for me to reproduce in this written blog without special research on CSS rules or old-school HTML tags. But pretend it fits the margin of the chapbook page when I reprint it here, as though there are 3-4 spaces in between each word:

Moved by a small spirit they hover
parts of completeness incomplete in turning
the mobile pivots round upon itself
we see it come & go & turn back again
make odd patterns against the wall
is one turn more believable than another
& see there is a different shadow cast
when my hand propels the motion

Owing again to the difficulty of printing superfluous spacing in web code, the poem wherein the title of the collection is printed would not appear formatted correctly unless photographed:

It’s not superfluous to me.

Some books I understand the premise of. Some require more attention. Unfortunately, I cannot admit to understanding the premise of this chapbook. But it does, in my headcanon of poetics, fall into the category of machine. This is a different type of mechanism, however, that Rose Maloukis has developed to render this book.

Several pages later she produces this, unexpectedly:

For the unnumbered pages in the chapbook we are provided two hints in the end of the work:

Page 17, Lines five and six are partially taken from the folk song, “Billy Boy”.

Page 23, the mandala referenced is Tibetan and is from the Palace of Buddha Bhaisajyaguru. It is called “Healing Buddha with medicinal plants.”

I cannot say I understand everything happening here, but I can, for reference sake, say I am a completionist when it comes to crosswords and sudoku and chess puzzles, but cryptic crosswords don’t speak to me. So suffice it to say, there is something cryptic happening here, but maybe that speaks to you.

All this being said, I cannot determine whether or not Rose Maloukis speaks to me:

blurbed shadows diffuse car shapes in some damp
idea of panic that I have seized by touch tight on the steering for
you or me to pull to the side close by a bird disoriel hung
in mesh, no nest, crumpled lost depth of field wind wail
thunder, count, crooked bolt snap, ended edge bland and I
could see where bird-I stopped and all the rest kept moving

Undeniably, Rose Maloukis writes verse that is statically in motion, like a freeze frame on a VCR fuzz.

I would hate to use the John Ashbery cop-out and say “I like it even though I don’t understand it” but I will say I reserve judgment because I haven’t cracked the code yet. That, itself, is part of the thrill of poetry, sometimes. And Rose Maloukis has it in spades, hence undeniable. Rose Maloukis is indecipherable, but has rhythm—her poetry must be crackable.

Last minute mention: she thanks Sarah Burgoyne in the acknowledgements section.

Spoiler alert to end the review: we have one other Maloukis title on the desk to review, from Turret House Press, by which point... who knows? Maybe we will figure out her method by then. I’m locked in.