The poems of Arlo Quint, son of Maine and lately ally of Brooklyn, read to me like excerpts from a musical consciousness that uses phrasal units of varying lengths to keep time and also to track its curious workings. Following this vein, Quint’s arrangements handle the mind-at-work as baseline subject beneath a deceptively broad set of locales (surfaces) engaged with the common particulars of perception: “that barefoot and eerie we / race blocked ache crisis and see / bright velvets growing alongside / an inexplicably well worn road // parenthetical to location needs / prepositions float lastly away.” As with some of Robert Creeley’s later poems, we get the sense that, in order to respond to reality in poetic language, one first needs a measure of feeling. Without it, the mind’s voice cannot find any ground from which to address the larger world. While these poems might often seem to be “taking place” in specific nowhere zones (“state of the bus address,” “a special brand / of semi-literacy / flies human flag over / human pyramid / parking lot”), they are in fact being pitched through their nuanced cares and broodings to a potential audience of anyone. That is, the poems do not construct a world and by implication invite a reader in, so much as they turn, constantly, on the edges of their phrases (not unlike a dynamic that can be found in Hoa Nguyen’s work) so as to maintain a tone of immediacy. All the while Quint engages the oddities and outrages one is constantly met by in our shared existence, which for him, as it was for Emerson by the time he wrote his essay “Experience,” is all outside. And when Quint really begins to stretch out in a longer poem, you can hear his talent for working emphasis within varying registers of speech: “don’t fight the background music / the plan is the heist / tune stage dread hitting a ray / a single solid side arrow out / won’t fight rather walk down street / lose mind, play piano / bring the people to their feet.”

—Anselm Berrigan

 

all the old symptoms

Our Ladies of Sorrow sigh deep
these phantoms disdain this little language
washed out in tears dark paintings
delirious wild empire and tremble
always in translation always gone
that they may haunt but never hold

in time this lecture paints itself
in walks this rhyme and voila: a poem
blaming its shoe while the foot is guilty
in the other hand a clean brush

what seemed most sudden then
drew a sudden breath slow mutiny
final resting place in outlasting pieces
They wheeled in mazes; we’ve got the writing

 

fatal depleted souvenir

a special brand
of semi-literacy
flies human flag over
human pyramid
parking lot

no company
no picnic

the dark side looms

good of the heart
thumb of the nose

 

porches of the brain

travel pills state of the bus address
faces of death race by send help
hearken back great heights head in
hand elbow to the world take flight
unabridged village idiot heart shaped sigh
operation fairy dust officer logic
Cats of the Wild no more meaning
than the sound of tides would claim
Always the standard repertoire in line
no more inability designed to harmonize
take care past crimes unrivalled
and woe unto they who would wake
well-fed on an astral diet of no-dream
a double life crashed in space
sunk haze drunk late projected
to forget to lose to win

 

thanks for asking

that you’re dialed in high above the context
raining down from heaven above
the simple way we all mean something else
that it says so

pounding the soul of this thing continually
greater than the sum of its good feeling
more money out-of-reach ecstasy

that you have here solid ground
there’s no way from home

it’s all about what they call their great teachings
or broken forth in the more golden sun of evening
parts per night to measure the feel in unlike terms

mix another cigarette

don’t fight the background music
the plan is the heist

tune stage dread hitting a ray
a single solid side arrow out

won’t fight rather walk down street
lose mind, play piano
bring the people to their feet

remember every line
still life with exit sign
emptied by hysteria last

and like how
do they get those ugly computer things to tell
everyone standing around to be like ‘fuck it’?

send some vibrations
quiet normal life

given stay in the sudden change future
clairvoyance wins the workforce

devastated by the plausibility of it all
before lost footing

scenery of the predetermined outcome
probability in the ballpark

classic edges of sleep no regret

one window is for the other world
through the trees
more trees

systemic burn
drunken scrawl
go outside
collect thoughts

to have waited long enough
for pure summer radio to wail on
the true stunted pill life positions

that barefoot and eerie we
race blocked ache crisis and see
bright velvets growing alongside
an inexplicably well worn road

parenthetical to location needs
prepositions float lastly away
leafy sole nerve key bundles

not to famously sleep bitter night
for nothing or work there to loathe
every rare precious light grown
on amorous desire perversely no

not to hang from
to save everyone

complains repeating sea
projects imperfection
references something

scientifically proven
to be totally awesome to be
followed by an average confusion

a weird bell rings the world
forms conclusions
with the facts
you chose to mention

ill-conceived
subject/object
apolitical rag-pile

puritanically deprived relevance
endlessly permits return
any worse for the wear

various phrasal densities dumb

regular people we were just talking
we love it a reason here and air
matching frequency everyone knows
natural crystal demonstration death beam

the way a perfect circle might appear
another war-scarred spokesman for terror
another workaholic doctor another quota

separatist guerilla
clock-smashing charisma
control hands in a dream

never too late and parts unknown
very specific parade past each stray summer
giving September ambient space then winter
whatever helps to get out of bed each day

transferred to an
afterlife sideshow

pastured out to the
well-manicured wreckage
of a dissolving dream

there are reasons
to see the sunrise
would freak out the competition

various center-of-town angry mob
scenarios running in a lot of heads

plus that whole talking animal thing
can really sneak up on you
so get comfortable