notes on 'wild life rifle fire' by paul siegell

wild life rifle fire by paul siegell is out from otolith earlier this year. it is a book of concrete poems in large-sized bold helvetica, black on white

a lot of the poems contain puns by breaking words into two or three lines. this combined with the visual emphasis in general reminded me a little of e.e. cummings

a lot of nonstandard characters/letters are used, with tails and accent marks, and there is a lot of fluctuation between underline, italics, uppercase, and lowercase. i think this gives the poems a more lively/active feel compared to my grid-set uppercase poems, for example

there is a poem that says 'RAIN' at the top and has a page full of letters and punctuation that looks a little like rain. i am not sure, but this may be an allusion to past concrete poets. there is a poem by seiichi nikuni in poems for the millennium volume 2 that has the word 'rain' and a lot of punctuation filling the page

there is also a fourteen line poem that includes the word 'sonnet' enjambed

from reading and viewing wild life rifle fire, i feel paul siegell is probably a cool person who says witty things and mostly has a good time

here is a youtube trailer of the book

here is paul siegell's blog, where you can currently get a signed copy of this book for $6