SCULPTURAL POETRY

tangibility exists in a poem in its depth: as a poem extends vertically and horizontally along the page, there is also a third unseen z-axis from the page to your eye.

Yannis Ristos effectively folds the poem into itself by giving the stanzas irregular numbers, suggesting a jump in time, space, and construction between the separated prose.

Section 14 indicates concentric ideas symbolized by color: "in the white egg // a yellow chick // a blue song. The song is within the chick is within the egg, and by giving us a cross-section Ristos sidesteps reality: the visible world would see only a white egg, since the overbearing white obscures the chick and its song inside. Take into consideration the cross-section of a zebrafish gill on p.85 of Super Vision: via the transformation of vivid colors, we can see the process of blood conversion from de-oxygenated to oxygenated as if it were a topographic map, even if this could never exist to the visible eye. There is always a poetic counterbalance of ideas trapped within ideas that exists within everything, and thus the nature of the naked eye is to flatten and "simplify" this counterbalance by obscuring all but the outer layer.

In the gap between 14 and 26, Ristos moves from visual aesthetic to emotional complexity: a blade hidden up a sleeve indicates complicated social interaction, far from a chick crying a blue song. The zebrafish gill is a pristine example of this complication in that while it exists as a visual piece, it also documents the process that keeps the zebrafish alive. However striking it may seem, the gill still serves an infallible purpose.

When referenced to the zebra gill, the "blue song" gains complexity, also: an idealistic chirp, yet at hte same time a plea for live and a herald for the life within. Take into consideration the microscopic eye blood vessel of a guinea pig on p.114 of Super Vision. As an aesthetic object the hole exists in negative, useless, bottomless space, yet its actual function is vital for the guinea pig to see. Try to imagine a guinea pig looking at this image: a same blood vessel in his eye is pumping information into his brain about the bleakness and obliquity of that same blood vessel.