Nikki Reimer ---blog

And as usual, the Book Thug chap is a perfect objet d’arte. Lick it. Love it. Read it. Wear it. Though la letter fits. (That last utterance was spousoid again, not eckhoff.)

“Are there no poets with their name beginning in G?”

That, and it’s a pleasurable read. Sometimes I get frustrated by conceptual works, but here is one that brings a focus on language and utterance to the fore.

“You said a mouthful.”

Surely Yankovic can relate. Sexual undertones winched to the surface. 

“Haa ha, I, ha, sure do, Pat. Hee he. And here’s Jack, who really shakes. I had a hunch. Gift certificate. How would you like it?”

and

“Come on. Let’s go for big money. Come on, let’s go.”

Though I did read it twice, savouring the awkward dialogue and disjunctive phrasing in lines like: The show, not the book. Truly a model of consumption. Anyway, the effect of eckhoff’s conceit is to emphasize the show’s bizarre language and, to my mind, hyper-capitalist impulses. 

Now Vanna has her own blog; it’s Wheel 2.0. Remember those? I can recall watching the show as a child and playing an Apple IIe version of the game in the days of black screens and green text. Which must be in it’s, what, billionth season? The chapbook is a simple transcript of Rounds One, Two, Three and the Bonus Round of an episode of that ubiquitous game show, Wheel of Fortune, but reversed. eckhoff’s conceit is simple in the telling and ingenious in the reading. Yes, several. Can I have an S? “Lots of people with S write poetry,” my husband says to himself, sorting our poetry shelf in the corner of the room. 

“Hell-o. Vanna. Here comes Vanna White.”

By which I mean, eckhoff’s take on Pat Sajek and Vanna White puts Weird Al Yankovic’s “Stuck in the Closet with Vanna White” into stark and hilarious relief. The chapbook in question, Game Show Reversed, follows a clever conceit through to a rather satisfying (in the sense of jouissance) end. 

I didn’t comment on such and will refrain now. Conveniently enough, one of the several BookThug offerings that arrived via Canada Post shortly before I departed on my trip to Tor-Dot a month ago is a little gem of a chapbook by one kevin mcpherson eckhoff, lately of a curiously sexual post on this very blog. For now, however, I’m finding it difficult to maintain the sort of focus required for the thorough reading and parsing of a book of poetry. I know I shouldn’t complain, and certainly I should be able to catch up with my reading list and my projects eventually, once I’ve eased in to the new schedule a bit more. Which is fantastic, except for the negative effects on my energy levels, attention span, and ability to, oh, read and write as much as before. I’m finally working again, thank ye gods.