Reviewing Four Short UDP Titles #1: My Ida by Simone Kearney

What if I were a little
manufacturing plant of
Ida?

New York’s Simone Kearney has written a book that is captivating. My Ida is captivating, drenching, charming, alarming. It returns to Gertrude Stein’s Ida, but goes beyond, personalizes it, brings the concept (and the concept’s concept, and the concept’s echo, reverberation, refraction) into a refreshed 2017 glance. The book is as much about Kearney as it is about an Ida that is acknowledged and explored by Kearney. It is as much about poetry and the poetic image, the poetic voice, as it is about the landscape of objects that could be, are, and will be before, with, and after us. As it is about the process, and the chance of process. My Ida is a book of self and a book of other, and it is also a book of ether, but it is also a book of all, which is where the captivation occurs. Demonstrative of play, demonstrative of affect, demonstrative of awareness, importance, elevation, My Ida is the sling that arms the shot, the tension of the band before the release. It is the envisioning of the funnel that emerges from the ceiling of sky to pour down and activate the landscape. It is the wing outstretched to absorb a generated current of air. It is, as per Kearney's choice, an onion. There is, in My Ida, a chance to explore what would otherwise be left behind, and thus a love for that exploration of which Stein would approve. Simone Kearney’s My Ida is the exerted glance that’s worth intercepting, worth returning, worth remembering.

My Ida by Simone Kearney was published by Ugly Duckling Presse in 2017.