In this first letter, I write about Nuar Alsadir’s poem ‘Quantum Displacement’, published by Granta Magazine and available to read here: https://granta.com/quantum-displacement/ * The lacuna is the extra-long space between words that appears throughout 'Quantum Displacement'. Much greater use is made of the lacuna than the line break in this poem, where enjambment is the norm rather than the exception; the poet’s privilege of line breaks is used to make a slim block of prose which is then re-broken down into sub-sentences, often self-interrupting or complexly parenthetical. Lacunae in poetry always take me to the work of Hoa Nguyen; I think of it as her visual trademark, as she uses it throughout her writings with a similar effect of setting expected line breaks against a different kind of unit of meaning within and across lines. However, almost all of Nguyen’s poems are far shorter than ‘Quantum Displacement’, and might be expected to total five lacunae instead of a hundred and twenty. Nguyen builds up the habit over a whole body of work (which I hope to talk about in another letter soon), and this establishes a pattern of how we should read these lacunae, but in ‘Quantum Displacement’ we have to learn as we go, seeing them stand in for undefined punctuation marks, separate items in an endless list, or indicate new interjections into the conversation. This is further indicated by italics for quotations, but these are always bracketed by lacunae. Alongside this is the use of "^", the
Letter 1. Hello World, Hello Kitty.
Letter 1. Hello World, Hello Kitty.
Letter 1. Hello World, Hello Kitty.
In this first letter, I write about Nuar Alsadir’s poem ‘Quantum Displacement’, published by Granta Magazine and available to read here: https://granta.com/quantum-displacement/ * The lacuna is the extra-long space between words that appears throughout 'Quantum Displacement'. Much greater use is made of the lacuna than the line break in this poem, where enjambment is the norm rather than the exception; the poet’s privilege of line breaks is used to make a slim block of prose which is then re-broken down into sub-sentences, often self-interrupting or complexly parenthetical. Lacunae in poetry always take me to the work of Hoa Nguyen; I think of it as her visual trademark, as she uses it throughout her writings with a similar effect of setting expected line breaks against a different kind of unit of meaning within and across lines. However, almost all of Nguyen’s poems are far shorter than ‘Quantum Displacement’, and might be expected to total five lacunae instead of a hundred and twenty. Nguyen builds up the habit over a whole body of work (which I hope to talk about in another letter soon), and this establishes a pattern of how we should read these lacunae, but in ‘Quantum Displacement’ we have to learn as we go, seeing them stand in for undefined punctuation marks, separate items in an endless list, or indicate new interjections into the conversation. This is further indicated by italics for quotations, but these are always bracketed by lacunae. Alongside this is the use of "^", the