The Friday Influence

Just a quick post to share my latest review for The Bind!

In this review, I share thoughts on Lara Mimosa Montes’s The Somnambulist (Horse Less Press, 2016) via an “eight-ball” form.

Alternating between excerpts from the book and my own critical/meditative prose reflections, this review mimics the pool game of eight-ball in terms of its section and its free range form.

Here’s my explanation:

In [the] spirit of braided open-endedness and intimacy, I have arranged my thoughts on and reactions to The Somnambulist across the following fifteen moments from the text. Consider these thoughts arranged like a game of eight-ball after the break shot where nothing has been pocketed. The pool analogy stems from the narrative of the uncle, whose role as a hustler parallels the role of a poet for the speaker in the book. My aim is to have my thoughts parallel the excerpts in a like manner, with the review being another open table where what matters is not any grand point being made or “pocketed.” Instead, the back-and-forth between reader and text is the focus, the reading experience as a game without scores, whose play and movement are trajectories into poetry.

Check out the full review here.

— José