RANK by Kristine Snodgrass, reviewed by Sylvia Van Nooten

RANK by Kristine Snodgrass, is in part glitch after glitch of contained and potent shape and color.  Each piece hums with an understatement that can only be understood as pressure—emotion, thought, intellect, experience—waiting to burst out.  Burst out in song or poetry, in ART—I found myself held within this pressure. 

The second part, Snodgrass' poetry, resounds with a lovely tension:   

“Object of art! Lumps from a freezer going to work in absolutes.  Pushed down in hieroglyphs and then pregnant again...” (pg. 72) 

Each written image frames the visual images, a beautiful balancing of the two.  With this book Snodgrass captures a moment in time when nothing is certain, in the personal and the political.  There is the pain of uncertainty as she speaks from the past to the future.  Endings begetting beginnings and perhaps, those beginnings are too late.

  “There are few variations that our mothers have also imagined. Like weeds majestic and quarreling, thoughts like you lure into the dancing light.  We are imagined and then you left. Past burns, stripped and pressed.  A grind and flood—darkness glared.  As I paint the road, afflicted sobbing peaks.  Blue fills a partial page, black enters this year. Long live the pain and its slow ending.  We are wicked, after all.  How we roll on floors and watch ourselves splinter into the Milky Way. And we can’t stop it.  Prayers as nourishment. Spells as sacrifice.  Yesterday, I looked into a camera.  I’d like to speak to him.” (pg. 92) 

 The explosion and release of the line, “splinter into the Milky Way” has me wondering if this art, this poetry is about the unintentional joy of unexpected futures.  A beautiful, powerful book, and one I will return to again and again.

RANK, published by JackLeg Press, can be purchased on Amazon 

Kristine Snodgrass is an artist, poet, professor, curator, and publisher living in Tallahassee, Florida. She is the author of Rather, from Contagion Press (2020) and the chapbook, These Burning Fields (Hysterical Books 2019) as well as  Out of the World (Hysterical Books 2016) and The War on Pants (JackLeg Press 2013). Her poetry has appeared in decomP, Versal, Big Bridge, 5_Trope, Shampoo, 2 River View, Otoliths, and South Florida Poetry Journal among others. Kristine’s asemic and vispo work has been published in Utsanga (Italy), Slow Forward, Asemic Front 2 (AF2). Her work was just featured in the Asemic Women Writers Summer Exhibition Online. Snodgrass has collaborated with many artists and poets.

GAS Featured Artist: Kristine Snodgrass, presented by Sylvia Van Nooten

Kristine Snodgrass is an artist, poet, professor, curator, and publisher living in Tallahassee, Florida. She is the author of Rather, from Contagion Press (2020) and the chapbook, These Burning Fields (Hysterical Books 2019) as well as  Out of the World (Hysterical Books 2016) and The War on Pants (JackLeg Press 2013). Her poetry has appeared in decomP, Versal, Big Bridge, 5_Trope, Shampoo, 2 River View, Otoliths, and South Florida Poetry Journal among others. Kristine’s asemic and vispo work has been published in Utsanga (Italy), Slow Forward, Asemic Front 2 (AF2). Her work was just featured in the Asemic Women Writers Summer Exhibition Online. Snodgrass has collaborated with many artists and poets.

I “met” Kristine Snodgrass on the Facebook page,  Asemic Writing: The New Post Literate several years ago.  At first I was intimidated by her credentials and hesitated to get to know her.  Once I got past my own neurosis I found her to be the most supportive, listening, creative and FABULOUS person.  She is not necessarily aware of how much she supports and encourages other writers and artists, but she does.  Her work, both the poetry and art, is enigmatic, deeply thoughtful and with an underlying playfulness that adds to the richness.  In her own words, here is Kristine.  ~ Sylvia Van Nooten

-What's behind your artistic vision? 

I think my answer may be similar to other artists: I do it because I have to. It is not just expression, or a politic, or an outlet, it is my life. A good friend once told me that I had an integrity to my art that was great. My life and my art are the same. There is such a small boundary between what I make and who I am. I think for many of us, we are caught in a gray area that seems liminal, and that is all consuming and becomes a place of ecstasy. I have said this before about ecstasy. Do you know that song, “Starry Starry Night”? Listen to it. Go ahead. There is a recognition there of Van Gogh and his love that cost his sanity. In the song there is a lyric, “With eyes that know the darkness in my soul” referring to VG and his ability to see the human consciousness and if that is the case, if he could see that forever in us, how torn up and diseased he must have been? How years later one observer could look at him, really look at him and understand this. And the loneliness, too. This is the artist. And I don’t want to liken myself to Van Gogh, not at all, but to lay light on this condition. Maybe I see that darkness, too. I think I am misunderstood, mostly.  I don’t know what ppl think about me. I think I make ppl angry. I think I have been angry, too. If I can show them what I see, then that is good.

-How does being an artist help you communicate with the world?

I think I am horrible at communication. People are always mad at me. I don’t know what that has to do with my art. Maybe I suffer and the art is supposed to take that over. The art is something I almost can’t control. So my body must be trying to tell me something, or tell the world something. I often have this fantasy of being in a big space, like a warehouse, and rolling around on the floor in many buckets worth of paint. Yellow, blue, orange, pink. I don’t even have to be naked! What communication! I miss being in public spaces, arting and reading poetry. I think that COVID has made me realize that there is a touching we need from others. I need to see and feel an audience, or watch another poet or artist. Don’t get me wrong, all of the work I am doing now long distance or distanced is so wonderful, I just miss that here, now thing. 

-Have you built or joined a community of artists around the world?

YES! My best friends are artists around the world. I have met so many people in Facebook groups! I also am on Twitter and there are some really cool folks there. I would say, without hyperbole, that being on Facebook in the asemic groups has changed my life. My work has grown so much in such a short period of time. I have been able to collaborate with so many wonderful artists, and to share work through mail and the Internet. I have met dear friends and also some really great mentors. It is so weird because we “hate” social media, you know?