A Script

<b>Joel Chace's</b> <i>A Script</i> cons our part: part Asbergian stutter, part zen enlightenment, words and white spaces carefully/randomly placed pace us through a spectrum of verbal light, asking if there is a difference between self and other, background and text. These experiments of space and the phrase and word range over nature, food, and communication, invoking Inca and Silliman both, “speaking that other language again...yield itself each sentence.” —Larissa Shmailo<br /> I like what Joel Chace does with the topology of the line, the way he shows how far it can be stretched while still maintaining its integrity. And I like how in doing so he takes the plainest words—especially everyday nouns like work, linen, world, office, desk, ceiling—and makes them oddly visible in the poem's raking light: “words    /       tiny    far<br />      but clear” indeed. —Barry Schwabsky