Fluttertongue: Book Three: Disarray

In the third book of Steven Ross Smith's multi-volume fluttertongue, Smith turns his keen trickster's eye on the poem itself, and the ways in which it is presented. Smith pushes the boundaries not only of verse, but also of language, and or our ability to know what surrounds us and how to articulate it. Smith excercises the malleabililty of language and meaning and explores moments of grace and dislocation. His improvisatory and aleatory methods capture the fleeting and flirtatious nature of mind and event in their certainty and disorder. Smith views the narrative and syntactic line as a wall at which to throw words, waiting to see what sticks and what patterns emerge from the disarray. The result is a book that, like improvisational jazz, reveals more each time it is experienced.