What Makes Love is Everyday Actions

Stone Girl E-pic, Ed Baker (525pp, Leafe Press)

I suspect this book might be Marmite... depending on the willingness of the reader
to work, it'll either be loved or hated... nothing between... no grey, just black or
white. Why? Well, in relation to most mainstream offerings, E-pic is unorthodox
in form - relying heavily, as it does, on graphics to augment and complement the
texts which, themselves, are visuals, handwritten or typewritten, tumbling down
the pages or clustered around sketches reminiscent of the scratchy outsider art of
Daniel Johnston or of later near-pornographic Picasso. In his foreword, Conrad
DiDiodato describes Baker's work as, 'a combination of haiku-inspired minimalist
writing, Eastern calligraphy and the artist's penchant for choosing the right
material,' which, in this case, is a love affair that results in pregnancy and
childbirth.

However, that's not to say the narrative is linear. Rather, the book, using the space
afforded by its large format, is divided into five volumes - four shorter
textual/graphic sections and one final long textual section - each containing
threads that are repeatedly revisited in the same way as the mind is drawn back to
the same principal aspects of any given situation under analysis. Indeed, the first
four sections could be taken to be there to appeal to the fantasising, imagining
part of the brain, while the fifth appeals to the symbolically rational of another.
Or, at a different level, the first four could be taken as highlights that lead to the
detailed overview in the fifth. Whichever, this is the crux of how to read it - the
whole is greater than its parts - dipping in simply doesn't work. E-pic needs to be
allowed to absorb, if not wholly consume, the reader in its completeness.

In 'choosing the right material' to achieve this completeness, Baker has created a
work crammed with explicit sexual references, whether in the graphics or texts,
that juxtapose the lustfully tender physicality of love-making with the purely
parturient... not so much the usual poets' fare of sex and death, but, rather, sex and
birth. And, there's something very poignant in such a juxtaposition - after all,
what else is there as important in life as the drive to see the species survive,
whether intentional or accidental? Sexual politics aside, there's also something
very poignant about this expression of the duality of the female body, as both a
pleasure-centre and giver-of-life, that a straightforward, linear love poem would
struggle to provide.

Without
Mind
Stone

dives
into
murky
pond

sinks
to
bottom

so
many
frogs
in
one

pool

croaking

Throughout, symbolism plays a large part in the texts, particularly in relation to
the two principal characters who are referred to as stone (her) and mind (him):

one
mind

one
stone

dichotomous

with the female, stone, being a reference to the procreative powers of Mother
Earth and the analytical, poetic and wise nature of the male being the mind. Given
the various forms the female takes, stone becomes rock and even, to accentuate
the liquidity of her position, lava. The child, being the issue of stone, is, naturally,
referred to as a pebble. The male, mind, is reflected in several references to
poetry:

each time
is
first time

do you
remember

meanings


in
each
brush

with
each
stroke

poem

just
being


beat


sound


silence

and:

did you yet get
that version of

poems

I suppose that you
want me to send
another love letter

and, concluding the entire piece:

what
can
be

written

is
its
own

poetry

In fact, the liquidity of their situation, in general, is symbolised not only by lava,
but by numerous other references to swimming and to water in its various forms...
pools, rain, snow, water-birth etc. Water also forms the basis of the irony of the
piece - her escape from Vietnam was by sea (more water!), despite associating
boats with her unfaithful husband who would often use his own pleasure-craft for
entertaining his young conquests.

This Vietnamese connection is worth mentioning, not only for its importance to
the water symbolism in the text, but also because of the opportunity it affords
Baker in relation to the linguistics he employs. Where others may have
incorporated foreign words/phrases in such a way as to have them stick out like
sore thumbs, like markers to show just how clever or well-travelled they are,
Baker simply adds them into the mix of word-play he uses... the split words, the
tumbling/scattered words, the triple columns and so forth... so that they fit
comfortably with no sense of pretentiousness or ostentation. Indeed, if anything,
for me, more than the graphics, it is Baker's innovative, intuitive word-play that
shows him to be worthy of DiDiodato's epithet, 'this remarkable American poet'.

kicho ui tugge
kal mangnan

pa ro

chae bae ha da

Yet, above all, what makes Baker even more remarkable is that, despite the
availability of Vispo, the computer-generated visual poetry that's been flooding
the internet for the past two decades, he has avoided it like the plague,
maintaining an artistic integrity that's pure and traditional... an admirable integrity
that's attributable directly to calligraphy, collage and minimalist writing. Though,
how could it be otherwise? The electro-mechanical drone of a computer would be
hard to reconcile with an artist for whom, 'Everything comes out of silence and
goes back into silence'.

John Mingay 2012