every surface formng frctals: A review of ON(3) TIME by maija mist
The poems in maija mist’s on(3) time (Arteidolia Press) portal experiences instead of depictions or descriptions. This emerges most evidently through each poem’s materiality, which is to say through its extralinguistic sonic resonances, its rhythms, as well as its visual presence and how these constituents powerfully inflect and redirect our relationship with the words we encounter there.
This impact likewise rides upon her plays on the ambiguities of English orthography in a way often more faithful to the actual sounds of speech than how the language is conventionally notated. “The” becomes th, etc. Other times, after images of early informal phone texting protocols soak through. “And” becomes &nd, and so forth. mist also intermittently incorporates special characters with a mild nod toward emoji parlance.
All of this from the start initiates a decoding pause that coaxes a reader to not take these words as routinely for granted as one ordinarily might, but also a pause into the state of reverie that mist encircles in her musings, with images floating with the grace and variability of water striders skating across a pond’s surface, that state of mind between words, that unguarded flow of awareness while one isn’t readied and armored for public presentation.
Her observations may thereby often be quotidian or intimate, but there’s also a radio (if not a radiotelescope) with its dial drifting across whatever magnetic currents might be informing a moment. The shape of suspension she invokes floats a weaving among multiple dimensions of consciousness, reaching towards those polarity reversals latent at the edges of contradictions, the potential transformations that can spark further interconnection. Context. Context is close to everything.
The degree of invention in this collection stands out especially as one notices that none of these poems look alike. Nothing is rote. Each poem lays out a unique spread organic to the flow of its consideration and language, but they’re also, all by themselves, visually arresting compositions.
She generously appropriates space among the words, sometimes between clusters or stanzas, inviting a reader to wait for a moment and listen to that active silence, to stop and just look out the window for a spell. She also graphically stretches out individual words. If a reader paces the reading proportionate to how the words are laid out, a start/stop, accelerating/decelerating, almost slow motion roller coaster like wave motion changes the way one might experience a line. A word’s phonemes can elongate and be savored like a bite of thoughtfully prepared, delicious food. It’s sensuous even as it slides right by the “sense.”
There’s a balance here that defies any additive assessment. Nothing is gratuitous, or mannered, much less self indulgent. Everything is clear, and yet clearly being about any particular topic can stay absolutely beside the point, as the focus is often multiple. maija mist keeps looking elsewhere … between, and differently. She demonstrates and evokes here a particular, even magical, in the very best sense of the word, way of being, one that listens closely, evoking and addressing a kind of all spectrum joy, all bitter/sour/sweet/salty/pungent, complex, receptive, welcoming, vulnerable, curious, appreciative, inclusive, ever questioning, more an attitude than an emotion, more a relational and conceptual modus operandi that any of us might willingly inhabit and learn from. And it’s here right now.
Author: maija mist is a writer & artist with roots in Baltimore, New York, & Hawai’i. Her work considers notions of space, transparency, time, & the limitations of the language. She weaves non-linear narratives that allow her audience to float through visions & worlds while considering multi-dimensional realities. She has published work with Metatron Press, Spectra Poets, Perennial Press, & Women.Weed.WiFi. Her visual work has been exhibited globally.
Reviewer: patrick brennan is a composing/improvising musician who lives in NYC. He writes about music, cinema, visual art & poetry.
