A
Literary Saloon
&
Site of Review.

Trying to meet all your book preview and review needs.


Contents:
Main
the Best
the Rest
Review Index
Links

weblog

crQ

RSS

to e-mail us:


support the site



In Association with Amazon.com


In association with Amazon.com - UK


In association with Amazon.ca - Canada


the Complete Review
the complete review - poetry



Context Collapse

by
Ryan Ruby


general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

To purchase Context Collapse


Title: Context Collapse
Author: Ryan Ruby
Genre: Poetry
Written: 2024
Length: 206 pages
Availability: Context Collapse - US
Context Collapse - UK
Context Collapse - Canada
from: Bookshop.org (US)
directly from:
  • A Poem Containing a History of Poetry

- Return to top of the page -


Our Assessment:

B+ : interesting concept, quite well done

See our review for fuller assessment.



Review Summaries
Source Rating Date Reviewer
The Telegraph A 9/12/2024 Luke Kennard


  From the Reviews:
  • "(M)ercifully, Ruby is an exceptional and eloquent guide through the poetic underworld of the last 2,500 years: he appears both to have read everything and to have a firm grasp on Greek, French and Occitan poets alike. (...) Context Collapse is at its best when it elucidates the tricky relationship between poets, publishers and the public, and in such a way that brings out the parallels and resonances between eras. (...) Context Collapse is serious, hard work: it’s a multilingual book that you study rather than breeze through, one that gives you a reading list every other page, even for the subjects you thought you already knew. That hard work is immensely rewarding, though, and there are many pleasures that even an idle reader can appreciate." - Luke Kennard, The Telegraph

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

- Return to top of the page -


The complete review's Review:

       Context Collapse is, as its subtitle has it: A Poem Containing a History of Poetry (or at least (more or less) Western poetry), a 'verse essay' written in: "loose, largely unrhymed pentameter", as Ruby explains in his Razo. (For this work of poetry that guides us through poetic history and traditions, Ruby opts for a 'razo' rather than 'Introduction' or 'Preface'; a razo is a(n Occitan) piece of prose that introduces a piece of troubadour-poetry ("accounts of the circumstances / in which they were written"); so also then Ruby's seven-canto epic closes with a separate tornada, another Occitan turn; as Ruby explains: "A short stanza appended to the canso / the tornada (turn) frequently addressed / the jongleur who would go on to sing it, / introducing a metadiegetic / framework for the poem, as though it were / necessary to provide a rationale / for its being written in the first place".)
       The poem-proper is presented with the text on the left pages and, facing it on the right pages, annotations (footnotes) -- a total of 152 footnotes (which are also presented in the same "loose, largely unrhymed pentameter" as the poem-proper -- even when they take the form of, for example, a lengthy quote from Karl Marx's Das Kapital (in the original, without translation -- fn. 103)). Often, a single footnote is longer than the entire bit of poetry on the facing page, with some pages only including a single (incomplete) line or two of the on-going poem -- e.g.:

But a basic law of economics¹⁴⁴
That makes poetry seem irrelevant
       Here the sentence began on the previous page and continues on the next, while the annotation -- footnote 144 -- presented facing these two lines (and then continuing onto the next (odd-numbered) page) is itself over fifty lines long (beginning, promisingly: "Using figures provided by Douglas / Messerli of Sun & Moon Press, Bernstein / proves that in the best-case scenario, / the single-author poetry collection / necessarily operates at a loss").
       Context Collapse is a 'history of poetry' -- beginning in earliest, oral form ("poetry and fire / are the first media") but one following a fairly narrow path. Ruby acknowledges this in his razo, noting of his poem:
Even within the historical and geographical space of Europe and North America that is its focus, major figures and movements are either touched on only cursorily, or not at all. It is trilingual; words, phrases, and quoted passages from Greek, Latin, Arabic, Occitan, French Italian, Spanish, German, Russian, and Chinese are all integrated into the poem -- which is nevertheless anchored by the English language and its prosodic traditions. Its primary reference points and concerns, especially starting in the fifth section, are recognizably those of a person educated in the United States.
       The verse essay traces the shifts in poetry -- not least in its presentation and reception -- from purely oral to written to printed ("paper. Moveable type. Quantitative / Technological accelerations / Which break a qualitative barrier --") to cheap mass- (and also self-)publishing and the infinite expanse of the internet (leading to the present-day situation where: "It becomes impossible not to conclude, / As he does, that many more people write / Poetry than read it") to, finally, machine- (i.e. AI-)generated poetry ("Exit: the well-wrought urn., Enter: AI"). Throughout, Ruby also pays particular attention to the social role and function of poetry, as well as access to it (noting, e.g., in a footnote that: "The nineteenth century / saw a huge expansion of literacy / in industrial nations, but the expense / of copyright put modern literature / beyond the reach of working-class readers [...] until serialization and the mass- / market paperback revolution made / living authors affordable to them").
       The early history -- mainly classical Greek, then especially Occitan -- troubadours ! -- , before moving more to the English-speaking experience, and Ruby's consideration of poetry in these different times makes for a solid tour, with some of the major poets of these various times as stepping-stones -- Wordsworth, Baudelaire, Whitman, for a stretch, for example. Theory eventually comes more to the fore in the twentieth-century coverage -- with Ruby also suggesting of the various early-century experimentation:
If one were searching for a synthesis
Between these tendencies, one could be found
In the writings of Gerturde Stein, who ought --
More than Joyce, Proust, Kafka, or even Pound --
To be regarded as the century's
Preeminent literary figure.
       The rise of the 'university system' ("For literary producers of all stripes"), beginning with the rise of creative writing programs, is another significant (albeit particularly American) shift -- nicely summed up by Ruby as: "A neoliberal archipelago / Rising with the neoliberal tide".
       Ruby traces the rapid shift (or fall) of poetry, from leading form of literary expression -- Ruby noting that as late as the mid-nineteenth century: "it is worth remembering that Flaubert, / when he set out to write Madame Bovary, / had knowingly chosen a minor genre" -- to more poetry being written than read (not least because poetry has: "the lowest barrier of entry / Of any art form in any medium") -- and notes that the problem (as it were) is fundamental:
     Restoring the poet's
social function will require, not new
poetic forms, but an entirely
new form of social organization.
       In the strong concluding sections he suggests that:
As the activity once known as reading
Is supplanted by the act of looking
At a text, whereupon the verbal art

Surrenders at last to the visual

And poetry becomes post-poetry.
       He is also led to suggest that:
   As another fin de siècle approached
The time had come to wonder: Why write at all ?
       But there remains a sense of some optimism and hope here as well -- suggested also by his choice of the poetic form in which to present his essay, as well as his dedication: "to the poets of the future".
       While there is a density of information here -- Ruby ranges far and quotes extensively (there is also a thirteen-page bibliography ...) -- the deliberate presentation in verse-form, in both the poem proper and the extensive footnotes (which make up (considerably) more of the total text) makes for what amounts to 'easier' reading, the text more approachable and, even if the meter is quite loose, with a subtle rhythm to it that helps hold the reader's attention. Similarly presented in prose, his arguments would no doubt at least read much drier.
       The poetry -- in both poem-proper and the footnotes -- has an often rough feel; this isn't your typical classical verse-essay, strictly adhering to form. It can feel forced on occasions, and inconsistent -- but the presentation works quite well and is especially effective in some of the breaks from page to page.
       Context Collapse is an interesting and engaging thought-piece -- not least in forcing readers to consider form and function in its very presentation. While understandable -- especially in where his argument leads -- that the focus is Western European and then American, it is rather a shame that it, as he acknowledges: "leaves out a number of traditions, including but not limited to the poetry of the ancient Near East, Indian classical poetry, the Chinese poets of the Tang and Song dynasties, the Japanese poets of the Edo period, non-European Arabic and Persian poetry, and the poetries of Africa, South America, and Australia". To integrate these would have been a far more complex exercise -- but, one imagines, most worthwhile ..... (As is, a smattering or Arabic and Chinese words have to do -- as part and parcel of Ruby's particular path, such as, for example: "新日日新: Modernism's motto", a nod to Ezra Pound's 'Make it New' (from Canto 53).)
       Its limitations are at least partially balanced by what Ruby does accomplish, with Context Collapse a work that is, in the best sense, provocative. Certainly worthwhile, and well worth engaging with.

- M.A.Orthofer, 11 December 2024

- Return to top of the page -


Links:

Context Collapse: Reviews: Ryan Ruby: Other books of interest under review:

- Return to top of the page -


About the Author:

       American poet Ryan Ruby lives in Berlin.

- Return to top of the page -

© 2024 the complete review

Main | the New | the Best | the Rest | Review Index | Links