Their Biography: An Organism of Relationships, by kevin mcpherson eckhoff. Toronto: Bookthug, 2015. 104 pp. $18.00.
Eckhoff’s fourth poetry book combines a number of currents common in the last decade of radical poetry, among them conceptualism, found text, and the relativity and instability of identity. “Their biography” is various people’s ‘biography’ of Eckhoff, a collage of short seemingly unedited comments that he has found, invited, or solicited from friends and relatives – all of whom of course have differing relationships with him. The book is interesting to encounter as an ambitious conception, although most of the short texts are commonplace, and probably not complex enough to sustain the attention of most readers. I included something similar in my last collection, a flarf poem entitled “View Frank Davey’s Poetics,” first published in Rampike in 2012. “View Frank Davey’s Poetics” was made up of approximately 123 of the first of the 139,400 short characterizations my name (I hesitate to say “I”) , had received on the internet, arranged in the priority that Google had given them. The text definitely generated a play of relationships; some of the characterizations reviled “Frank Davey”, some mocked, some were enigmatic, some tried to be factual, some tried to sell the services that the name offered, some spoke generously of someone they were referencing by the name.
Eckhoff’s fourth poetry book combines a number of currents common in the last decade of radical poetry, among them conceptualism, found text, and the relativity and instability of identity. “Their biography” is various people’s ‘biography’ of Eckhoff, a collage of short seemingly unedited comments that he has found, invited, or solicited from friends and relatives – all of whom of course have differing relationships with him. The book is interesting to encounter as an ambitious conception, although most of the short texts are commonplace, and probably not complex enough to sustain the attention of most readers. I included something similar in my last collection, a flarf poem entitled “View Frank Davey’s Poetics,” first published in Rampike in 2012. “View Frank Davey’s Poetics” was made up of approximately 123 of the first of the 139,400 short characterizations my name (I hesitate to say “I”) , had received on the internet, arranged in the priority that Google had given them. The text definitely generated a play of relationships; some of the characterizations reviled “Frank Davey”, some mocked, some were enigmatic, some tried to be factual, some tried to sell the services that the name offered, some spoke generously of someone they were referencing by the name.
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