A Review of
David Hinton’s Fossil Sky
by Alexis Vergalla
David
Hinton’s text Fossil Sky is single sheet of paper that stretches
fifty-four square inches. I am forced
to say text, as this is not a book in any standard sense. The reader cannot approach this text as a
traditional book or poem. There is no
spine, there are no collections of pages, and there is no way to gauge one
specific length of this piece. The
single page unfolds and spreads open and a thin perfect circle in blue ink nearly
touches each side. This line is the only
division between the inside white space that contains the text and the outside
white space. Within this circle, words
meander and twist, aligned to no edge of the page with no one beginning or
end. Phrases form chains, but without
the guidance of a specific sentence to contain them. Words drift by themselves, a “pKeeerr” rising
above the edge of text parading beneath it.
Already, I am forced to describe the text in three dimensional terms,
instead of a standard linear narrative.
There is difficulty in quoting text that fights the standard format for
line and punctuation, and to quote with entire accuracy I would have to give a
pictorial detail for each word. Instead,
I will try, within this paper, to suffice with a transcription of words and the
spaces surrounding them. This includes
the addition of punctuation within brackets to indicate the stop I have
chosen. Even with these
acknowledgements, paths cross and words mesh into one another, making it impossible
to distinguish each as a separate entity.
These places will also be marked.
If this collection of words cannot be called a book the question must be
asked; what can this text be called?
The large page, the internally circular design, the meandering paths;
all of these factors lead in the same direction. This is a map. As a traditional poem, this text fails, but
it is my argument that this project does succeed if the reader is willing to
approach the poem as a project in cartography.
A map exists
to convey information, but this is a somewhat shallow definition that lacks the
complexity present within maps. In Power
of Maps, Denis Wood writes “every map facilitates some living by virtue of
its ability to grapple with what is known instead of what is merely
seen, what is understood rather than what is no more than sensed,”
(7). Poetry, too, tackles the project of
conveying more than what is seen and sensed.
A poem strives to communicate an understanding and a sense of knowing.
What, then, separates the idea of map and the idea of poem? In Fossil Sky there is no divide
between a poem and a map. The poem is
the map, the map is the poem. To read Fossil
Sky, one must consider cartography.
The art of
cartography (i.e. of drawing maps,) is the art of leaving things out. A map drawn to include all the information
available would confound and confuse the map-reader. “No map, of course, can be completely “true.”
It must always sacrifice truth in one dimension to show truth in another,”
(Muehrcke 328). Street maps must show
the streets, forcing the details of the buildings that line the streets to
disappear. At the same time, feature
maps designed to give the emotional impact of a city through depiction of the
predominant buildings and landmarks must sacrifice accurate navigational
information in order to show the features in a way a tourist may remember the
experience. Fossil Sky is a chain
of words, but the overall impression of this text is of the blank, negative
space. The mere presence of words
emphasizes the fact that elements of this map have been left out.
To know what
is left out, we must know what is included.
Maps require keys or legends as a way to unlock the information
displayed on the page. A map from a
forestry service may include triangles for designated camping areas and a
walking staff for trailheads. A
map-reader familiar with the language of camping maps can shift from one to the
other with little need to consult the specific legend at the bottom corner of
the page. At first glance, Fossil Sky
appears to have no legend beyond a brief “Notes” section that defines the terms
“Circačte” and “Borie.”
However, this is a map made of text.
The legend may as well include the definition of written language,
indicating that groups of letters form units of meaning known as words. As a reader of the English language we
already know this legend. We can begin
to process the information spread before us by looking at the units of meaning,
the syllables that form words and the words that form thoughts. As the reader processes the language she
begins to feel the narrator of Fossil Sky crossing over the physical
space that the text demarcates. Although
a graphical representation of geography (i.e. shades and tones to indicate type
of land or lines to indicate physical rise) is absent from this map, the
geographical markings exist within the keys.
One line reads, “A stream tumbles through it, delighted childplay among
the perpetual ruins, and fills a stone basin[.]” There is a physical locality to this poem/map
that is discovered only as the reader begins to trace the paths of words and
unlock the keys.
In a book
written in English, we are trained to begin on the first page. The words begin, left to right, and we follow
the poem down the page. This is not the
journey of Fossil Sky. There is
no beginning in a poem that circles into itself, crosses its own path and never
finds an edge to rest on. Again, we must
look at the keys of language. A thicker
capital font marks a place where an idea may begin, but like a true map, there
is no one beginning. On a map
used for traveling by car, cities are marked as larger dots, written in larger
fonts, but these do not indicate a beginning point through which meaning must
be derived. These are only markings, and
the traveler may begin within this city, or work her way towards the
marking. One line of Fossil Sky
(may) begin:
No point in asking about gain or
loss I’m too tired for all this beauty
and silence too tired for the Teapot
sprawled out sparkling across autumn
skies for wide-open wind-parched
headlands where the sea forgot itself into limestone mountains
The reader
then has a choice to make. Arc left, and
follow the trail— “We’re more sky than anything else more sights and sounds forgotten and lost”
—tilt to the right and follow “into a circačte that gently alights on
its rocky perch arranges its
features[.]” Through the word “features”
the word circačte repeats, cutting across the center and leading into
“and river and this body’s shape at death
dark confusion:” Of course, the
line can continue on instead of turning, changing the line to read “and surveys
the valley below then spreads its wings
and drops lightly back into flight[.]”
The combinations and possible paths seem endless.
The manner
in which we must read Fossil Sky is not how we are taught to read
poetry. Instead, we must lean on how we
are taught to read maps. Maps are not
read left to right. Instead, we read
maps by their symbols, zeroing in on what information we need to discover and
connecting points across the field of the map to create meaning. We are forced to read Fossil Sky as we
would read a trail map, selecting a start point and tracing its pathways. While there may be a point that is marked as
a trailhead that indicates the beginning of a path, the map will simultaneously
show other trailheads and the journey is not limited to single beginning. As we proceed we must make decisions at each
divergent point in the path to create the meaning of the piece. Phillip and Juliana Muehrcke write “A map
engages a writer’s creative thought because it is truth compressed in a
metaphorical way, holding meanings it does not express on the surface. In this sense, a map may be equated with a
poem,” (328). Meaning in maps is created
through the network of connections a map-reader makes. How closely lines fall to one another on a
topographical map indicate incline and elevation, and how large the font of a
city is compared to those around it indicates its relative size within this
specific map of cities. Each map has
meaning that is constructed through the relationships of its individual
elements and given information for this map, because, as Marc Trieb
states, “unlike a language of words, the language of symbols used for maps is
not consistent from one map to another,” (6).
This seems to contradict the idea of moving fluidly from map to map, but
Trieb is not writing about the differences between camping maps. Instead, the inconsistency he refers to is in
the difference between types of maps; a map that shows camp sites and a map
that shows cell-phone service. He
continues, “[t]o alleviate the problem of inconsistency, a legend is included
with most maps to assist the user: it is the vocabulary, if not the exact
grammar, made explicit. These elements
exist only in a fixed relation to the ‘grammar’ or logic of a particular map,
and are not necessarily transferable,” (6).
As I have stated, the reader is aware of the “legend” in Fossil Sky because
the reader is aware of the rules and vocabulary of the English language.
A third
element always implicit in map reading is the map-reader. “Any discussion of mapping involves the
triangular interrelationship of the task, the user, and the graphic from that
results from specific constraints,” (Trieb 14).
Poetry, too, exists within a triangulation. In Projective Verse Charles Olson
states “[a] poem is energy transferred from where the poet got it (he will have
some several causations), by way of the poem itself to, all the way over to,
the reader,” (3). Olson is a
particularly apt voice to quote in regards to Fossil Sky. What more “OPEN” verse can one find than a
poem contained within the circle of a map, truly “COMPOSITION BY FIELD,” (Olson
3)? I retain the capitalization Olsen
uses throughout Projective Verse to emphasis his points in regards to Fossil
Sky. This poem’s meaning does not
and cannot exist without the reader; it is the reader’s journey and choice that
create the meaning of the poem/map.
“From the moment he ventures into FIELD COMPOSITION— puts himself in the
open—he can go by no track other than the one the poem under hand declares, for
itself,” (Olson 4). Although Olsen’s
“he” refers to the poet, within Fossil Sky it is doubly applicable to
both the writer and the reader. The
nature of this text forces engagement on the poem’s terms. To read Fossil Sky, the reader must be
willing to abandon preconceptions about beginnings and endings. In this, poems and maps again align
themselves. A map created to display the
emotional impact of a city (i.e. a feature map) cannot be accurately used for
navigation, and to approach such a map looking for navigational information
would be to ignore the contract of the map in the first place. When looking at Fossil Sky, the reader
cannot require the standard conventions of poetry that contain one beginning
and one ending.
In
discussing the physical layout of Fossil Sky, I have, thus far,
sacrificed discussing its lyrical content.
As previously stated, it is difficult to accurately quote a poem that
has multiple options and a distinct physical shape. However, the lyrical content is tied
implicitly to the physical form. “In
rising air above the sun-baked village, swallows circle tracing empty [large space break] arcs of
air, lit [large space break] wings shimmering [large space break] in and [large
space break and text cross] out of view [large space break] exacting the eye’s
various distances of sky[.]” Within this
line, the text rises and falls, much as bird flight does, and as the words
describe the swallows weaving in and out they enact this motion on the page,
weaving between other lines of text. In
another example, the line (may) begin “A circačte cries in slant light
igniting broken cliffs, its [large space break] pKeeerr [large space break]
pKeeerr [large space break] pKeeerr [large space break] rising above sun-baked
rock as it circles, tracing empty arcs
of air, lit [large space break] wings shimmering[.]” The sounds of the circačte,
(identified in the Notes as “a European snake eagle that often hunts by
hovering over fields while searching for prey,”) literally rises and falls,
snaking through the negative space of the poem and lifting the line that begins
“rising” above and to the right by nine inches from the line that breaks off
“cliffs, it[.]” In addition, although
this text is found in a different sector of the poem/map than the previous
quote, there are phrases that are almost identical. This sense of repetition is consistent with
map keys where, for example, identical tent shapes repeat to represent
different and individual campsites. The
swallows and the circačte are not identical, but both are represented
with “wings shimmering” rising above a “sun-baked” landscape.
It is
impossible to read Fossil Sky without reading it as a map, and again I
reiterate the difficulty in citing Hinton’s words properly. While the principles of cartography are the
guide for reading Fossil Sky, these
same principles are also the limitations that exist in transcribing the words
within their graphic element. The quotes
that I have used are sketches of the poem rather than a complete
rendering. Though it may seem a daunting
task at the onset, approaching this text as a map allows the reader to let go
of preconceived notions of reading. The
reader is then free to follow the words, as they are, to create and discover Fossil
Sky.
Works Cited
Hinton,
David. Fossil Sky. Archipelago Books, 2004.
Muehrcke,
Phillip C, and Juliana O. Muehrcke. “Maps in Literature.” The Geographical
Review 64.3 (Jul., 1974): 317-338. JSTOR Archive.
Olson,
Charles. Projective Verse.
Trieb, Marc.
“Mapping Experience.” Design Quarterly No. 115 (1980): 3-32. JSTOR
Archive.
Wood, Denis.
The Power of Maps.