What:
schema geometrica, my ninth full-collection, is a departure from my previous work in that it was conceived as a project book on two fronts.
For the longest time I wanted to write a book entirely of short poems, so the first parameter was form. So I zeroed in on the sonnet, or broken sonnet, as the shape, with collage as the logos. Joseph Cornell’s wonderful boxes were a model as well as the tableau vivant style of Sergei Parajanov’s film, The Colour of Pomegranates. I really wanted to get more of the world into my poems—I wanted to crash things together—and amplify the dynamics of the Shakespearean sonnet. All within, more or less, that 14-line range.
The last formal gesture is that I wanted to continue not using punctuation, which I’ve been doing for a few years now, so I could sound different and think differently in the poem, and also take advantage of what felt like musical and cinematic beats to me. I used dashes and double slashes here as those markers. This seemed like a good way to get a lot of content into the poem and take advantage of compression.
Content-wise, I was interested in exploring my digital life with “contagion” as the primary root note—e.g., going viral, getting a virus—and setting that digital narcissism in the context of climate change and my complicity as a member of the developed world in the ongoing harm. Essentially, I wanted to write a book on behalf of nature without the usual tropes of nature in it. I started the book in fall 2019, pre-pandemic, so when the pandemic hit, I was already there. And in a beautiful stroke of luck, doing that first shutdown in March 2020 when all the talk was about exotic wet markets, I was getting a backdoor tour of the Jacksonville Zoo and spending all day feeding and touching exotic creatures (flamingos, penguins, elephants, giraffes) as well as being up close with jaguars and river otters. So one design element of the book is a bestiary with vellum pages and erasures and images of the creatures discussed. And all this surrounded by poems that touch on electronic waste, nuclear waste, the harm my money does, the viral nature of music, where my clothes are made, that perpetual dance between the erotic and the pornographic, and, of course, the coronavirus.
And so I wrote, letting the daily news feed present ideas. That was the river I dipped my mind into each day. Or rather, slot machine, watching that single wheel spin, waiting to see what that Dada-esque scroll would gift me. So with all this in hand, I observed and wrote, got on amazing hot streaks, hit some lulls, hit more hots streaks. It was exciting. I have never had so much fun writing poems as with this book. It felt effortless.
Why:
As I said, my impulse was to get more of the world into my poems. I know I am connected to everything, I know we all are connected to everything, we are surrounded by things made by others elsewhere in the world, we are connected through the portal of the iPhone, and yet my poems felt so small and pinched when set against the actual life I lead, to the actual choices I’ve made here in the developed world that contributed to harm, sometimes (often) without my knowing it. I wanted to extend a Whitman-esque embrace toward that world. I wanted to map that world in these poems (at least, begin that mapping), name as many things as I could that I was connected to via the choices I made. I also wanted to embody those Pound / Frost bumper sticker ideas. I wanted to make it new for myself and the reader. I also wanted to surprise myself by crashing things together that on first glance might seem disparate, yet could be connected through what I thought were Euclidean congruencies. On one level, I suspect the poems feel very abstract on first glance, but to me they seem like ironclad syllogisms. The upshot is that everyday was challenging and new and totally surprising to me.
How:
Given the project nature of this book, I also altered the process by writing and revising all of these poems on my iPhone before moving them to the computer, often while I was out in the world, for example, at a doctor’s office, at the airport, ona porch overlooking the Gulf of Mexico, or just out walking and recording ideas. The iPhone screen tipped on its side re-enforced that sonnet shape, that box of light idea, and kept me mindful that the phone not only was portal to that global perspective but was also the way waste products spewed back at me. The flow was two-way, which was just fine, is exactly what I wanted. I wanted to embrace and take responsibility for all that was mine via that broader perspective. And all of it typed with the pointer finger on my right hand! Enjoy!
P.s. I can’t end here without mentioning the amazing color images that are in the book from comic artist Marnie Galloway, and from Michigan artist Julian Van Dyke. The book is also accompanied by an album of eight songs composed and performed by Tom Larter with me doing the vocals. They are wonderfully weird—we knew we were on the right track when Tom played them for his mother and she found them “scary.” Enjoy these as well. See cover of the book for the QR code.
Bio:
Dennis Hinrichsen’s most recent work is schema geometrica, winner of the Wishing Jewel Prize from Green Linden Press. His previous work includes [q / lear], a chapbook from Green Linden Press and This Is Where I Live I Have Nowhere Else To Go, winner of the 2020 Grid Poetry Prize. His other awards include the 2015 Rachel Wetzsteon Chapbook Prize from Map Literary for Electrocution, A Partial History,the 2014 Michael Waters Poetry Prize from Southern Indiana Review Press for Skin Music, the 2010 Tampa Poetry Prize for Rip-tooth, the 2008 FIELD Poetry Prize for Kurosawa’s Dog and the 1999 Akron Poetry Prize for Detail fromThe Garden of Earthly Delights (selected by Yusef Komunyakaa)as well as the 2016 Third Coast Poetry Prize (selected by Nick Flynn)and a 2014 Best of the Net Award. New work of his is appearing or forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, Ninth Letter, On the Seawall, Posit, RHINO and Witness. He lives in Lansing, Michigan, where from May 2017 – April 2019, he served as the first Poet Laureate of the Greater Lansing area. For more information, see dennishinrichsen.com.
Listen to Dennis read [Box of Sound w/ Some Funk in It] on The Night Heron Barks
Links:
DennisHinrichsen.com
GreenLindenPress.com
Interview with Connor Yeck
Dennis Hinrichsen / Grid Press
Dennis Hinrichsen / SIR Press
Linda K. Sienkiewicz is a writer, poet, and artist.
Learn more about her multi-award winning novel, In the Context of Love.
Learn more about her picture book, Gordy and the Ghost Crab.
Learn more about her poetry chapbook, Security
Thank you for visiting!