Bored In Arcane Cursive Under

These poems feel haunted . . . haunted by the beauty of mortality—the mortality of individuals, and mortality of larger living relational systems, the mortality or temporality of all form—amidst the simultaneous eternality of the life. A collection not made to be read in one sitting . . . these poems are too complex to be considered a dish, these are meals, to be devoured, tasted, experienced, passed through, digested and absorbed. What the poet gives us is “not a promise of wisdom, insight, understanding. / More like a disposition, a mood, a cloud shadow” the poet is the observer “scumbling an overgrowth-scolded escarpment, first responder” The poems speak “only as I do: in fragments, of a continuum" to the effect of being treated to an experience of things, errata, data, and information, but which show and share and don’t tell or dictate a translation.

In Hix’s juxtaposition of the immediate with the natural, with the historic, with the aeonic — we are led to see “events. Not individual populations.” Hix’s record of keen observation accordingly shuns the anthropocentric paradigm, and instead find it summed in “interdependencies, substitutions, successions.” Representative of all organizational levels and forms of life, we have the revelation and lament that this “verso to that recto: inextricable intertwining // entails that extinction of a single vertebrate species / snuffs, too, countless species of associated microbes.” A true work of deep ecology, Bored in Arcane Cursive Under Lodgepole Pine can astutely be encapsulated by these lines: “The experience escaped me, but I offer this report. / The truth escaped, but left a trail of evidence.” The reader is reminded, encouraged, inspired along with Hix to honor what we once had and held, but which we “hold no longer, and will hold never again,” and to remember, or allow ourselves to be reminded, with gratitude and reverence, that we still live in a time where “Goldfinches spill from one maple to pool in a next,” and “Borers practice arcane cursive under lodgepole bark.”

As the title suggests, we find the mysteries of what is communicated here in these poem-forms are all connected, created by, and embodying a flowing. Similarly, Hix employs his craft in a manner that lends intuitions and inklings—a sensing—a threading throughout felt in the sum of the lines, as much as related by words. Hix work is a guide, a cognitive map, a supplement to materialism. Less than translation, and without interpretation of these glyphs, the poet instead endeavors to “attempt to mimic their glimmerings.” There is a before and an after one experiences in reading this collection, one which may take adjustment for some, but one entirely apropos of our tumultuous times, but it is exactly the territory—or the mindset—humanity must plunge into to not only navigate, but repair, amend, remediate, rewild and protect for future generations of life if we are to survive, as the interdependent species we are, with a suitable habitat intact.


About the Author

H. L. Hix’s recent books include a novel, The Death of H. L. Hix; an edition and translation of The Gospel that merges canonical with noncanonical sources in a single narrative, and refers to God and Jesus without assigning them gender; a poetry collection, How It Is That We; an edition, with Julie Kane, of selected poems by contemporary Lithuanian poet Tautvyda Marcinkevičiūtė, called Terribly In Love; an essay collection, Demonstrategy; and an anthology of “poets and
poetries, talking back,” Counterclaims. He professes philosophy and creative writing at a university in “one of those square states,” and takes the classroom as, like the page, a space in which to worry “how to live between now and when everything changes.”