spuytenduyvil

Incretion is the process by which a substance is secreted internally and in turn, comes to control organic processes elsewhere within its own system. Thus do the poems of this collection function, creating landscape within anatomy and

vice versa until a world emerges on the body's page and confronts the reader.

 

 

To approach a rare and delicate otherness, it seems, the poet must hold his breath. In this respect, Incretion can be compared to the quiet, minimalist, yet intensely engaged compostions of Morton Feldman. Within the hypnotic hush of his words, we hear the advent of "something new."

     Rain Taxi

 

Brian Strang's INCRETION maps a post-apocalyptic future which is the present; in other words, our mortal occasion. There's lament—a dirge that lacks bitterness because it loves what is lost—and an elegiac language of the daily. But there's scariness, too—the tension of a noir narrative emptying itself of details, places, persons, placements, that have the ring of familiarity: our own necropolis. This is not a pretty book, as is true of many honest mirrors, but an imperative one.  "Roll up your limbs" and read.

     Aaron Shurin

 

What we mold in our guts, "acrid surge of the world under pressure," comes as the interior warning of our own disintegration, "full of noises and presences".  Cassandra, reborn, speaks from inside the voice of Brian Strang: "There is a whole history behind this fragile life. Though you hear me you do not understand."  These poems urge us to examine what body, what world, will suffice, what precariousness re-modeled from within could possibly bring about "the gaudy collage of shared experience."

     Elizabeth Robinson

 

Brian Strang's Incretion is a probe into the genuine state of things, seeking definition and measure amidst the blood-and-circus reversals of regime, market, vestigial culture. Where the first world hits the last wish—this is the challenged territory he would have us know, and face.

     George Albon