The Method

The Method by Sasha Steensen, reviewed by Emily Thomas

The Method, Sasha Steensen’s most recent collection of poems, calls on a controversial and mysterious text from the past (Archimedes’ manuscript of geometrical proofs, also entitled The Method) to read the present. The original Method is completely changed from what it initially was, and Steensen thoroughly explores this transformation in her poems. Steensen successfully constructs an original and unique text, while at the same time relying on the history that is associated with the first Method, and also with Archimedes himself.

The speaker in these poems is constantly nudging the reader to develop the same reliance that both speaker and poet exhibit in the delivery of these poems, as they read. In fact, the reader is required to establish a particular method for reading these poems, indicating that reading is a transformative act that plays an integral part in shaping the life of a text. One of the ways that Steensen calls upon the reader to become a part of shaping her Method is by providing the reader with a sketchy timeline at the beginning of the collection. This timeline is circular, and the events are not chronologically arranged, therefore the reader finds herself reading the separate events several times, piecing together an organic sense of the history of Archimedes’ Method.

Steensen begins her book with two short, untitled poems that, along with the timeline, set the tone for the rest of the poems, which can be defined as a kind of anti-formalism; it can even be said that the kind of formalism that Steensen relies on is methodically chaotic. In the first poem the speaker’s relationship with process and method are encapsulated in four short lines: “road, come pass / with me terrors / by the side / of seas & easterlies.” The speaker invites the road to mold to her method, rather than viewing her path as something that must be defined by what is outside of her. Steensen defines formalism on her own terms, and her experiments grow more and more radical as the poems progress.

As the second half of the book approaches, the poems rely less on conventional forms, and seem to reinvent form within their own boundaries. Beyond Steensen’s use of form, she also always refers back to Archimedes and his Method. According to her timeline, Archimedes’ text changes immensely as it is lost, recovered, stolen, and sold; at one point a monk palimsests The Method and produces a religious text over the top of the original text. Steensen’s Method reflects the same sort of disorderly journey that Archimedes’ text undergoes, and this is evidence of yet another layer of formalism that defines this collection of poems. Steensen’s Method represents a new formalism that relies less on exacting rules, and more on how poetry can make the rules conform to a new and original purpose.

The Method, Sasha Steensen

Fence Books, 2008, 61 pages, $15.00