{"id":5019,"date":"2022-11-18T16:40:08","date_gmt":"2022-11-19T00:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/GXL\/?p=5019"},"modified":"2026-06-26T01:35:28","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T08:35:28","slug":"review-in-verse-of-forgotten-work-novel-in-verse-by-jason-guriel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/GXL\/?p=5019","title":{"rendered":"Review in Verse of Forgotten Work, Novel in Verse by Jason Guriel"},"content":{"rendered":"

One good work of verse deserves another.
\n<\/span>though thudding rhymes alone do not mother
\nwisdom, grace or insight, at least to stab
\nat them tempers a critic’s gift of gab,
\nputting him, her, it or them on equal
\n<\/span>footing with the poet. Far from a sequel,
\nthis review of Guriel’s novel, Forgotten
\n<\/i>Work<\/i>, aims at but an ancillary slot in
\n<\/span>the limelight.<\/span>
\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Set in 2063
\n<\/span>in part in Montreal, a fraught city
\nwhose demolished Mount Royal by a fluke
\n<\/span>was inverted into a crater with a nuke
\nmisaimed by Don Junior, Acting President,
\nparody plausible for such event.
\n<\/span>Guriel, well-versed in the Canuck
\n<\/span>hive-mind, knew we couldn’t easily duck
\n<\/span>the spector of crisscrossing Soviet
\nor Russkie and NORAD missles. A t\u00eate-
\na-t\u00eate between strident adversaries
\n<\/span>leaves no safe and sure sanctuaries.<\/p>\n

James Gordon, eccentric founder and lead
\n<\/span>of a cult rock group, espoused this creed:
\nrenown is enemy of the sublime.
\n<\/span>He elected to descend not to climb
\nslopes of Parnassian fame, to confound
\n<\/span>poetry with raucous musical sound.
\nMountain Tea was the loaded handle
\nof his band, whose erasure is the scandal
\nupon which the plot turns. Its members lifted
\n<\/span>their name from the oeuvre of a gifted
\npoet also from Montreal, Van Toorn,
\n<\/span>Peter. As his name suggests, he was born
\n<\/span>In The Netherlands, moved here. Like Rimbaud
\nafter Illuminations<\/i>, this bro
\nknew when to stop. Having reached a summit
\nwith Mountain Tea<\/i>, rather than plummet
\ndown some abyss of mediocre despond,<\/span>
\n<\/span>he sought the complexity of life beyond
\nmere poetry.
\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0“Beyond music instead”
\n<\/span>or so the eponymous band had said,
\n<\/span>though their crazy music could not be pawned
\nlike Van Toorn’s book on mighty Amazon
\n<\/span>for over four hundred bucks (there’s a cheap
\nreprint at a price nowhere near so steep
\n<\/span>by Vehicule Press in fair Montreal).
\nNo. In fact, aficionados in thrall —
\na proliferating cast of hundreds
\narmed with a glut of hi-tech wonders —
\ncouldn’t find a vinyl, tape or file.
\nTheir last hope was to track down the exile
\nGordon, who made his home in the Dantesque gulf,
\n<\/span>which reeked of rot, decay, refuse and sulph-
\nur, odiferous strains perfect for punk,
\nthough a smelly place in which to spelunk.<\/p>\n

Not to rehearse its plot by chapter and verse,
\n<\/span>the tale’s set in a future Metaverse,
\nthough never is uttered that copywrit
\n<\/span>word. Guriel can thus display his wit
\nInventing names for things old and new
\n<\/span>involving Zuck and his nefarious crew
\nand the letter zed. Blogs have become zlogs.
\nThe web itself is the Zuck. Catalogues
\nof devices and programs are marked zed:
\nfolks read Zwitter, take Zzzquil before bed;
\nsnapshots are brought alive by touch to post
\n<\/span>on Zuckgram, Zucktube, any cyber-host.
\nZuber’s at ones beck and call, rather winks
\nsince double clicks have become double blinks.
\n<\/span>Teleporting is the norm, sometimes botched
\nas in The Fly<\/i>. Everything is watched
\nby helicoptering surveillance eyes,
\nwith ubiquitous hovering drones as spies,
\nThe real is virtual, as on Oculus,
\nexcept the device is superfluous.
\nCyborgs don’t “wear” Fleshtech, they merge
\nwith it, unless they die by power surge.<\/p>\n

I have mentioned Dante and Van Toorn
\nas influences Guriel has torn
\nfrom literature. There are many more.
\nFirst mentioned: Nabokov. Even before
\nVan Toorn’s MT<\/i>, Gordon fronted Pale Fire
\n<\/i>as the group’s moniker, poetry a lyre
\naccompanying, for a change, sound
\n<\/span>rather than the other way around.
\nAmong other literary ghosts haunting
\nthe novel are Pynchon’s two daunting
\nown cult tomes V.<\/i> and Gravity’s Rainbow,
\n<\/i>difficult models from which to borrow.
\nThe former’s alluded to in smartbook form,
\nmedia in which content will transform
\nper what’s on your mind; the latter, fallout
\nfrom a shared theme, the nuke, which takes out
\nthe mountain of Montreal (Spoiler
\n<\/span>alert: in the brief Epilogue the same broiler
\ntreatment will befall Edmonton — it’s in
\nAlberta, for you Yanks who cannot pin
\nit on the map.) The plot is an echo
\n<\/span>from the Chilean Roberto Bola\u00f1o,
\nwhose Los detectives salvajes <\/i>depicts,
\nputting aside its literary tricks,
\na cult around a mythic poetess
\n(better “poet” — let’s admit a foetus’s
\ngenitals should not impinge on belles-lettres).
\nHis heroine was but a raison d’\u00eatre,
\nas perhaps was Van Toorn’s Mountain Tea<\/i>.
\nShe never wrote at all, though to be
\nhonest, no one wrote anything: it’s all
\n<\/span>made up. Otherwise life would be banal.
\nAnd this motley cavalcade of authors
\n<\/span>but scratches the surface. Ignorant scoffers,
\nthose who think that poetry cannot rhyme,
\nwill not acknowledge or seek out prime
\nbookish real estate, the architecture
\nof allegory, the subtle texture
\nof allusion, articulate skills taught in
\nthe past. Yet some works are best not forgotten.<\/p>\n

As a reader immune to science fiction
\nnot to mention rock, my addiction
\nto Forgotten Work<\/i> came as surprise. I had
\nbought it in dumbprint, already not so bad,
\nthen on Kindle — Zindle in 2063?
\n<\/span>Just for browsing, Kindle samples are free.
\nand with Wi-Fi it’s close as we can get
\nto what future digital natives will fret
\nover, the true plasticity of a smartbook.
\nYet the BeZos price for the dumbbook
\nmakes me think its print run’s at tail’s end.
\nSo pick up copies to dash to a friend. <\/span>
\nIn any case, you got my message, heed it!
\nBuy it in any format, then read it!.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

What a delight it was to read this tweet by the author himself:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Screenshot<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

********************************<\/p>\n

My main poetry site is https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One good work of verse deserves another. though thudding rhymes alone do not mother wisdom, grace or insight, at least to stab at them tempers a critic’s gift of gab, putting him, her, it or them on equal footing with the poet. Far from a sequel, this review of Guriel’s novel, Forgotten Work, aims at … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Review in Verse of Forgotten Work, Novel in Verse by Jason Guriel”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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