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“In 1986, Noam Chomsky published a book called Barriers, elaborating a theory of what kinds of grammatical elements can combine, what kinds can't and how it happens. Kunin's debut treats language in precisely that way, and also sees it as in a completely synecdochic relationship with its users: language's parts stand for our wholes and are every bit as mechanical, modelable, automatic, desirous, thwarted, blocked and explosive as people are when they try to approach one another. And there are major constraints here: the entire book is composed in five syllable lines comprising three-line stanzas; every poem is ‘mirrored by another poem with the same title,’ as Kunin notes in a preface. The dual-poem format, coupled with violent, sexualized content (deft but definitely disturbing) gives the impression of very fraught attachments indeed. The book is certainly about having feelings like shame, disgust and grief, but it is also about how they get produced—and registered within a system that may be human in seat, but not in origin: it may be divine. To that end, there are references to Paradise Lost and to Renaissance body part love poetry (the senses here represented by ‘Five Security Zones’). This is beautiful, complicated poetry from a poet exploring ‘the device in the/ assumed direction/ of its mouth.’”—Publisher's Weekly
These poems are conceived as a value-neutral Paradise Lost. In other words, someone who is not god tells you to avoid a certain tree, and you disobey the instruction; the result is shame.
Two characters agree that one of them is supposed to worship and obey the other without actually believing that the other possesses any special qualities that would enforce obedience; the first one disobeys the second one and has to be punished.
A body has five parts; each part is alarmed. Descriptions of the parts set off the alarms.
Affect lives in the face and is measured with a ruler.
The measure is a five-syllable line arranged in three-line units. Each poem is mirrored by another poem with the same title.
Endorsements:
“With alarmed intelligence, Folding Ruler Star exposes the violence of an expectant look and synthesizes the organic and the robotic, then unzips them just as machines unzip/concrete dividers/on the highway. May Aaron Kunin make all the rules, and may our capacity for facial communication finally collapse within his tremendous Dionysian orderliness.”—Jacqueline Waters
“If the measure is that which disfigures, then Aaron Kunin's hinged ruler needs to be placed alongside Duchamp's standard stoppage as an equally ingenious corrective. In Folding Ruler Star, the security zone of the book is breached without shame, so that to live becomes reason again.”—Miles Champion
Click here for TABLE OF CONTENTS
From the Book:
the t.v. has a
human face (th face
has two memories)
in the shade of low
branches or human
furniture under
the smothering tree
the damaged women
(enter together)
and some of them heard
(pretended not to
hear) your suffering
tree's facial nightlight
ripening human
(yes) fruits behind the
eyes tree looked thicker
reflected in your hair ah in the shape-
less mask of your hair
your additional
hair your living hair
asrin
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AARON KUNIN grew up in Minneapolis, was educated at Brown, Johns Hopkins, and Duke, and currently lives in Connecticut, where he is a visiting assistant professor of 18th-century English literature at Wesleyan University. His work has appeared in Boston Review, Fence, The Germ, No: A Journal of The Arts, The Poetry Project Newsletter, The Poker, and elsewhere.
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