There are different kinds of minimalism. One of the most common, thanks to Robert Grenier &, behind him, Robert Creeley & Louis Zukofsky, focuses closely on minute linguistic interactions, magnifying them in effect for closer inspection. Some haiku, on the other hand, tends more toward a depiction or scenic effect. A philosophic mode of minimalism treats it as tho the structure of a haiku held the properties of a syllogism. In each instance, tho, whether one line or as many as five or six, the miniature poem performs by reducing the number of choices the reading mind can make, so as to foreground those that remain.
Chuck Stebelton, the new literary events coordinator at Milwaukee’s justly famous Woodland Pattern, still the best poetry bookstore in the USA, practices a kind of minimalism of the middle ground, something I either have not seen before, or least have never noted as such. What I know of Stebelton’s work consists of a single chapbook, Precious, published by Answer Tag Home Press (the logo is <Answer>, a bit of HTML humor that might not be recognized by readers half a century hence) in an edition of just 75 copies.¹ Precious – there are so many bad puns that one can make with that title that I hope to avoid them all – consists of a single work in five numbered sections, each of which contains six (also numbered) parts. Only one of these 30 sections exceeds two lines – 25 have only one.
What interests me most about Stebelton’s strategies are the sections that would appear to be less than a complete thought. Thus, for example, the first two parts of III:
i
Brevity’s lure,
ii
tells them until then. They’ve gone native
in the West’s most participatory study.
One reads “Brevity’s lure,” both as a text in itself and as part of a larger, somewhat more opaque (or fragmentary) sentence. But how much do we trust our reading? Not as much, perhaps, as the word whose syllables cross the chasm between sections iv & v of part IV, which together spell second. But perhaps more than the gap earlier in that same part IV betwixt city & boats as in our bikes antiqued the city /// boats.
The way words integrate into themselves, syntax, & image schemes isn’t all that Stebelton is about. The whole section with boats reads as follows:
boats. Modal
The next section, starting with a preposition, angles off in a different direction altogether. Indeed, run together from that point forward, part IV would read:
Modal to sea in a sieve, second star on the right and straight on till morning –
Ending on that em dash, a sentence with rather a Maurice Sendak air to it. What, Stebelton seems to be asking, is the relation of these simplest elements of the poem to their counterparts of language & meaning? A good question, generally well executed.
Maybe Stebelton isn’t the greatest poet ever – a line (or section) that reads simply
I come to bury
leaves me cold. But I am intrigued in how Stebelton is tackling these other small formal problems. They are where you can see him thinking in (& with) the work. And in such spaces, brevity’s lure is very bright indeed.
¹ Tougher Disguises appears to have published a larger collection, Circulation Flowers, but I’ve not seen that book.
