Ken Sparling

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

This is the latest release by our friends at Canadian small press Pedlar, and unfortunately the first title of theirs that I found myself not so fond of, which can mostly be chalked up to the nature of experimentalism in general; because while the exact perfect amount of abstraction and poetry in a title like this is what makes one of them so great, much like most of the other Pedlar titles I've read, just the tiniest amount more or in the wrong direction can make the whole thing fall apart at the seams. And that's simply the nature of cutting-edge work, why it's called cutting-edge to begin with, and why so relatively few writers even attempt such a style; because not only is there objectively only a tiny window that constitutes a success with experimental stories, but with that window changing locations from one individual reader to the next too, so that one person may love a project for the exact reasons another may intensely dislike it. It's still recommended to adventurous readers in this spirit, in the hopes that all its elements may deeply click with you; but in my particular case, I found Intention Implication Wind to be just a little too scattershot for my tastes, more a case of abstract poetry written in a prose form than a narrative tale written with a poetic sensibility.

Out of 10: 7.4… (meer)