www.GenniGunn.com

11/24/07

JACKET COPY

In Faceless, Genni Gunn explores "the impulse for the edge," a magnetic field between the gloss of the topside world and the grit of the world beneath. Both these landscapes are fascinating and treacherous, haunted by faces that are obsessively worn and shed, torn off and replaced, where identity itself is arbitrary. Impersonation, even of oneself, is the rule. In a piano bar, the musician is a chameleon adapting to the faceless men who sit around her piano. The faceless cadavers in the notorious BodyWorlds exhibits stalk the rooms while, in Gunn's title poem, an ordinary French woman finds redemption in the world's first face transplant after being mauled in a strange accident by her pet dog. To be anonymous in today's urban places is to be free yet isolated, to be in a constant flux of longing for and fear of "the dead and beating heart," both in one's own breast and those faltering in the chests of others. The countless faces that Gunn confronts on the streets of the city or behind closed doors make her important new book such a compelling read–as does the "delicious anxiety" she sees hanging in ecstatic, sometimes terrifying suspense in the liminal spaces between.

 

EXCERPT

©Genni Gunn, 2007

Reprinted by permission. All Rights Reserved.

wEstSCAPES



To live on the edge of a continent is to understand
the finite property of things    delicious anxiety

fear of falling   optional suicide measures – jump
into cold bluewater   submerge   float out to sea

Inland   continuity unsettles   cities rush
the thick of people   things   a constant distraction

no oceans to dream beyond   no balancing
on perilous cliffs   no hypothesis of death   Faces

stare out of windows envisioning a mountaintop
the slow   smooth glide through air   the soundless

parting of waves    Here where a continent rises
and falls possibilities for disaster are endless

an earthquake   east and west fault lines   or a tsunami
leviathan quenching its thirst in English Bay

swallowing the West End whole   or a torrent of rain
steeping the mountainside in mud   a steady flow to the sea

To balance on the outer edge is to expect paradox
equilibrium   a faint horizon between impulse and rationale

We erect amulets – THIS IS A NUCLEAR-FREE ZONE –
in the shadow of US destroyers that intermittent slice

the depths of the harbour   point to the words   hold up
banners   bob on small lifeboats in the path of steel

no more a palisade than one small man in China
waving his shopping bags to stop an army

To live on the edge of a continent is to balance
clarity of vision with an unshaken belief in myth

in semi-darkness   totems stalk us   carved eagles fly
frogs swim the water of the eye and bear claws

scratch tremors in the spine   downtown the city
face is a thin mantle crust beneath which arteries

pulse with spice and opium  cards   knife
blades   plunging into the centre of the earth

we ski in morning light and swim in afternoon
the impulse for the edge is a magnetic field

insul/isolation   and we create a story   this is our
new frontier   last chance for utopia

©2007 Genni Gunn. All rights reserved