Lombardo, Gian

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Albert Mobilio\u27s \u3cem\u3eThe Geographics\u3c/em\u3e and Gillian McCain\u27s \u3cem\u3eTilt\u3c/em\u3e

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© Providence College  The author(s) permits users to copy, distribute, display, and perform this work under the following conditions: (1) the original author(s) must be given proper attribution; (2) this work may not be used for commercial purposes; (3) the users may not alter, transform, or build upon this work; (4) users must make the license terms of this work clearly known for any reuse or distribution of this work. Upon request, as holder of this work’s copyright, the author(s) may waive any or all of these conditions.  The Prose Poem: An International Journal is produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press (bepress) for the Providence College Digital Commons. http://digitalcommons.providence.edu/prosepoems/ THE PROSE POEM: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL  Volume 7 | 1998 Albert Mobilio’s The Geographics and Gillian McCain’s Tilt Gian Lombardo  Albert Mobilio. The Geographics. West Stockbridge, MA: House of OutsideSeries/Hard Press, 1995. 83 pp. $10.00.Gillian McCain. Tilt. West Stockbridge, MA: Hard Press/The Figures, 1996.84 pp. $10.00.At the heart of Albert Mobilio’s first full-length collection The Geographicsis a series of prose poems by the same name. Framed before and after bylineated poems, this sequence is arranged in eighteen “steps” interspersed(every three steps) by a verse “half-step.” As the title suggests, the series isrooted in creating a sense of place, which is never static, nor is it ever simply asingle place.  What seems to be more important are the continual arrivals anddepartures each piece brings, as well as the layers of place created by memoryand its relation. Much like a board game, you literally step through the maze onthe table, moving your game-piece so many squares per throw of dice. Or youtravel among the twistings and turnings of a mind as adept at describing the“landscape” as it is cunning at inventing it.The strength of Mobilio’s “The Geographics” lies in its remarkable syn-tactical, imagistic, and metaphorical constructions. Consider the sequence’sfirst paragraph:And what a cremation that was. Now I can mark my exact place inthe etch-a-sketch bible of conclusions. Only then will I be quietabout the lack of shade here. There’s always some way of head-ing off alone to where the cover’s good, some way of saying thisis not an ordinary way of talking. The exact is often found tornoff from the rest with edges sharp enough to cut tolerance fromskin. Exact collapses upon itself with the din of a spontaneouschore. That’s what I’m doing, stashing the verb to be behind acouch and calling it a place to sleep.Mobilio’s prose reflects no ordinary way of writing. From image or meta-phor he will launch into true surrealistic (not just some forced imitation, but anuncanny updated echo of Breton’s ear for sound and image) linguistic fancy—a passage syntactically logical, convincing, and complex as well as explosivelybeautiful in its wild progression and leaps:Antennae lie buried beneath the floor because the reception isbetter that way. The airwaves brought us crumbs & pocketchange but nothing worth diving in for. We learned whoeverpounds the rock makes fire, and whoever plows the flame growstheir own flaw. Instinct rode us down, skewered our conversa-tion, kept us in our seats. That’s why we cannot listen to theseunwrapped winds and murmurs.In this paragraph we move from floor to air to water, earth, and rock, then tofire—a vortex of “unwrapped winds.”Mobilio mixes numerous passages of such elaborate and intriguing lan-guage with completely linear and literal passages:After the sex she thought about how she was unavailable nextweekend and how tight her schedule was getting. The room wassuddenly warm and close. She realized the ceiling fan was set onlow but as she stared into the slowly revolving blades she some-how felt cooler. In the courtyard below the window, sounds of anafternoon barbecue had commenced. That, she thought, was theworld outside. Its exact and locatable home.Passages such as these become “exact and locatable” instances in a nar-rative that relates arrivals and departures in landscapes that spring from child-hood memory and from the pain of a failed romance. If there’s a chink in Mobilio’sconstruction, it’s in how he manages the transitions in modes of discoursebetween these literal and figurative paragraphs. The lack of integration createsmore stumbling at times than stepping. Not making these passages discretewithin each piece might be one way to alleviate this jarring. But Mobilio doescreate scenes with a riveting language, an insistence to reach beyond theordinary to examine a self that is constantly changing against the backdrop ofa seductive, harrowing, and mercurial world:Aching still, I’m gathered against this soil. I step outside the mapshe sketched of our physical clutch, and reach back to steadythis stride. But the ground itself is launched, and I cannot savemy place. That page will have to go unread.In Gillian McCain’s Tilt we are also treated to the idea of movement. In hercase, the world that seems to hurtle by us (and us by it). In this first bookMcCain presents us with more than glimpses of some thing in motion—remi-niscent, for example, not of a strobe-light photograph of a body with limbsflailing as it falls, but rather a compendium of such shots taken in a mirror withboth object and observer in delirious action. Occasionally, the planes of move-ment intersect and we are greeted with their collisions.Each piece in Tilt contains a single-word object as its title. Of course,there’s the usual array of concepts/objects: self, history, revolution, war, fam-ily, memory, life, dream, sex, truth, time, death, love, and work. The scope ofthese “topics” is wide and appears to be chosen to depict as many of theimportant capitalized words of the twentieth-century, post-industrialized worldas possible. The ambition to grasp, portray, satirize, and dissect on a scale asbroad as this is admirable. However, the places where McCain’s vision is par-ticularly illuminative occur when she brings us some unusual suspects frommodern civilization, as in the book’s title piece:The big, big try of the jet getting off the ground. All too soonthose mean vocal shakes; too far the original itinerary; soonconfusing signals at astonishing speeds, destination moon. Theear focused on the smooth and brutal “I” emptying out, and thethousand fine lines cloaking the obvious: one line only, ten itemsor less, one mind split over the pros and cons, nine reasonssupporting the dignity of exile. Climbing over the city, swingingout above the sea, fragmented only when interrupted by thought.Moments like these—when the “program” to analyze a bankrupt culture is setaside for determined flashes of what cannot be readily related, dripping withcultural significance or intellectual cliché—provide the most interesting andengaging views of life. The energy spent in debunking or refurbishing thehigh-brow conceits and cornerstones of civilization don’t yield as much of a“charge” as when McCain lights the fuse to more unexpected moments, situa-tions, or objects.Given the framework of universe and narrator/observer rushing by eachother, McCain oddly chooses to deliver each piece with a very simple syntacticand rhythmic structure. While the piling up of short, direct, and non-complexsentences does echo the pell-mell rush of the universe and narrator, its repeti-tive use over the six-dozen-plus pieces renders this helter-skelter world dullingat times.  This might not seem a great shortcoming if it weren’t coupled with anemotional stance of the narrator/observer which portrays more attitude thanemotion itself, creating a two-dimensional representation. But it’s McCain’soccasional explosions of brilliance that give rise to the belief that she couldconsistently build a three-dimensional representation by playing more withthe mix and making the form, approach, and stance less static.The ultimate horizon of Tilt’s ambitious scope makes one expect greatthings. On the whole, McCain’s wider vision and fearlessness in tackling the“grand scale” holds much promise in the future as can be portended in herpiece “Direction”:In a forest of bending and swaying forms, a girl could not find herway. She camped out on a jagged bluff. She preferred to live inher own little words, but people were everywhere. She had sym-pathy for the camera that panned aimlessly in the bushes. Finallyalone, she bedded down on a knoll of pine cones and dreamedabout the goat boy. She wrapped her bag around him and theyentered the zone together. He gave her a present: this cone. Theyate berries and caught bees in mason jars. For days they livedquietly, counting backwards. Then he said, it’s time for some newfaces. She refused to move when he tried to squeeze by. Thenshe was awake. There was plenty of elbowroom left in her uni-verse, her words. Yet somehow she knew that she wasn’t theonly lost girl who believed in ending up where you began.It’s a big universe, full of “elbowroom” where writers, such as McCain, bringus the hope for unexpected gifts.Gian Lombardo

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Albert Mobilio\u27s \u3cem\u3eThe Geographics\u3c/em\u3e and Gillian McCain\u27s \u3cem\u3eTilt\u3c/em\u3e

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