Euclid Shudders

Author: Mark Tardi Publisher: Litmus Press (2003) Finalist for the 2003 National Poetry Series. Euclid Shudders opens with this line from Gertrude Stein: "What is the difference / between arithmetic and a noun." This is something that Tardi examines relentlessly and with a calculated efficiency. A "squirrel is a swan," a "cough is a couch," meaning is being defined and redefined. Objects and concepts take their place and then dance around the edge of our perception in Tardi's phenomenological verse. "In Mark Tardi's first collection of poetry, Euclid Shudders, there is a distinct vibration between objects and their words, as though each relation were poised on the precipice of its inverse: the pause before the cataclysm. In this weighted space, potential sounds hover as a last breath between inspiration, expiration, and the anticipation of nothing: 'on a bridge / emptied with inertia // so close // canopic jars torn / beneath.'" –E. Tracy Grinnell "Euclid might well shudder at how far