Not all of these are interesting poems on their own but they do function together as a collection. They frequently veer into irritating extremes of repetition but I think Gorrell’s doing something with that technique rather than just being lazy or unoriginal. The poem entitled “*” begins in a more confessional mode:

     yesterday I took off my clothes and thought of you
     I avoid eye contact with everyone in public spaces
     you can act a certain way
     I’ll respond in a fairly predictable way…
     lately  I feel like everything is stupid
     every day I would write the same poem

The poem goes on to list the variety of activities that seem to be attempts to jar the speaker out of this state of ennui, and, you guessed it, they go like this: “I click on gmail/ I click on word documents/ I click on firefox/ I click on myspace/ I click on my blog/ I click on statcounter” and so on. This pattern repeats for several pages with occasional statements about what the speaker is anxious about, at which point the poem then breaks into a two page repetition of a single line, “there is nothing in my reality that I feel I want enough to try.” Obviously, all that clicking isn’t helping.

Although both writers wrestle with the dichotomy of belonging and alienation, Calvocoressi’s narrators look for solace through collective actions such as church and sports, while Gorrell’s search for acceptance leads to attempts at connecting online that only increase his separation. These two writers inhabit the same cultural moment but their style, tone and subject matter couldn’t be more divergent. Somehow there’s satisfaction in reading these two polar opposites in how they demonstrate the vast scale and range of contemporary American poetry; it serves as a reminder that we all miss out when we limit ourselves to our own side of the fence.

Related Articles from The Fanzine archives:

Rob Tennant's review of Kaya Oakes' Slanted and Enchanted

Thom Donovan profiles Philly's Avant-Garde Poetics

Review of Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary

Also: image on 4th page is of Brandon Scott Gorrell.