Snailhorn (fragments)
t thilleman
ISBN 978-0-923389-13-0 $20.00 472 pages
"The Kamasutra conjures four basic types or orders of women, each a different shape, a different animal-type, a different elemental persuasion and humor. The Conch Woman (Shankhini) is explained to be somewhat testy, ‘colicky’ is the word used from the older translations. She seems to correspond to my own rhythms—someone who was of a portion of the monthly moon’s cycle and irritable from this cycle.
So her mood as a correspondence to the mood the poem would elicit by staying, by not retreating, opened an elemental association to the time in duration spent within her.
Shankhini became the belly of my beast as well as base, the muladhara of my human form, accessed through this social encounter."
In Snailhorn (fragments) thilleman presents a speaker seeing themselves in pieces, the fragments of an archeology of humanity, in shapes defined by history, shuffled by spirits. We are both matter and mother to matter, dust and mud, spliced shells filled with water, overflowing. Telling the epic of humanity in what is left behind in the trail of history, thilleman shows that we leave a fractured, haunting trail of meaning; our attempt to live is to make sense of the pieces.
Toad Suck Review
t thilleman migrated to New York from the Mid-Western State of Wisconsin in the early 80s. For a brief period he worked for Pace Editions and the artist Chuck Close on handmade paper editions under the direction of the late Joe Wilfer. Through-out the 90s he helped edit Poetry New York and their pamphlet series. He is the author of more than a few poetry collections including Three Sea Monsters, Onönyxa & Therseyn (opening book for an extended work, Sketches), and the novel Gowanus Canal, Hans Knudsen. His collaborations with j/j hastain are Approximating Diapason, Clef Manifesto, Snag as well as the forthcoming glossary, Tongue a Queer Anomaly. His literary essay/memoir, Blasted Tower, is being issued from Shakespeare & Co./Toad Suck. Ongoing and online, tt blogs musings taken from the Kamasutra and others at conchwoman.wordpress.com. The companion book to Snailhorn, with essay and drawings, is Entering Yoni Space On The Pouring Pivot Of My Own Lingaraj.