Review of Cinéma Vérité by Michelle Elvy … in PANK

– from Michelle Elvy’s review of Cinéma Vérité in PANK. Read the entire review here.

Playing with narrative and story – asking to what extent these constructs hold any meaning at all – is a central theme. We hear this message in the opening lines of the first poem – The beginning middle and end don’t fit/ our lives anymore – and it’s a common thread. Rasnake’s examination of cinema has nothing to do with mere movement from A to B; plot is not nearly as interesting as the perplexities of the order of things. We see this in “Games of Persuasion” (This is the way the story begins./ Just repeated lines. Words shifting), in “Everything in Motion” (The end bullies its way into our joints/ moves us closer until the face we see/ we no longer recognize), and in “Woman in Tableaux [middle]: My life, chapter 3” (her words finding her at last – or should I say ‘at beginning’ – finding her where she has always been) – a poem ordered in three parts, starting in the middle (“My life, chapter 3”), then moving to end, then beginning.

~ by samofthetenthousandthings on April 26, 2014.