By ED PARK [Poetry Foundation] – “Quintessence of the Minor: Symbolist Poetry in English,” by the California poet Garret Caples, is the first in Wave Books’ pamphlet series, and the format perfectly suits the subject. Its very appearance is minor. The cream pages, stapled twice at the spine, sit in the hand like the program for a lengthy wedding. There’s no jacket copy, no information about Caples or Wave’s new series. It doesn’t even say how much it costs! Touch the uncoated cover after reading the sports section, and the smudge is there for good. This feels like a document made to be passed on, in secret, to a fellow traveler.
Though I am no scholar of Symbolism in any language, and indeed wasn’t familiar with nearly all of the forgotten figures whom Caples resurrects, I found myself responding so strongly to the spirit of his project that I wondered if the whole thing had been executed entirely for my benefit. (Caples loosely defines Symbolism here as “a broad poetic tendency of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,” consonant with work dubbed “decadent” or “fin de siècle.”) I read it in three gulps and kept peppering the margins with check marks of delight. With a supply of thumbnail biographies that read like the most improbable fiction, and a leisurely but learned style, Caples makes the minor seem major.
I’m not a poet, but like Caples I’m drawn to minor writers, particularly fiction writers, and to minor works by major authors, often over their more famous achievements. I’m attracted to minor forms as well: the book I happened to be reading alongside “Quintessence of the Minor” was Wonders in the Sky
Continued at the Poetry Foundation | More Chronicle & Notices.
