Several Steps from the Rope

by Guy Beining. 34 leaves of collage. 2002. Xtant Anabasis. 1512 Mountainside Ct., Charlottesville, Va. 22903-9797.

Book Review by Michael Basinski

Ways of reading words within the context of a poem that is a collage is an area of literary exploration now engaged. This book is composed of 34 collages. They are poemollages, poemcollages, pomollages, colloems, which are a merger of visuality and word to make a word art or a poem of visualities. They are, as I have written now numerous times ? they are OPEMS, a poem which is visual and verbal and breaks many, oh so many dull rules of verse. Beining explores sex and death, it seems to me, with bits of words, fragments of dream speak pushing, pulsating against and juxtapositioning themselves in the midst of the clipped and pasted pure viz-images. His words make these collages speaking pictures. Perhaps meshing, sliding as in sexual, Beining, within the context of his works, his opems, asks poetic questions for the reader to ponder, read and then answer. Do words bring death? Are words a sexual manifestation? Reading Beining’s collages opens OPEMS the possible. Rejoice.