A.J.Carruthers, The Tulip Beds

For The Tulip Beds: A Toneme Suite, compositional procedures were overdetermined by multiple operations converging at once. Initially, I was moved by a photo image of the extinct filter-feeder Siphusauctum Gregarium, which appeared to show a three-line "stave.” I then proceeded to conduct a reading-through of a scientific article on the filter-feeder, an English translation of Johannes Kepler's Harmonices Mundi (1619), briefly phonography (Isaac Pitman shorthand), and some of Aristoxenus's Elementa Harmonica.  I freely broke these “rules,” or did homophonic translations of the previous poem. Some of the tonemes were unpredictably polysemous, while for others I tried to determine their meaning, often in relation to the image. The Tulip Beds is an attempt to rethink the poetry of the Scientific Revolution in a contemporary harmonic arrangement.

Exhilaratingly inventive visual and linguistic poetics . . . full of daring intelligence, humor, and gravitas, with delightful details on every spare but ardently composed page. Lightly intersecting motifs – literary, musical, scientific, erotic – invite joyous readings and rereadings in meditative silence or playfully voiced.
– Joan Retallack

a.j. carruthers is an Australian-born experimental poet and critic. He teaches at SUIBE.