Clangings (2012) by Steven Cramer is a first-person book of poetry that explores the meandering, conflicting, and troubled narrative of an unnamed schizophrenic patient.
The book begins with an epigraph from T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock":
It is impossible to say just what I mean. This quotation elicits the disordered language the book represents. Cramer uses literary devices that focus primarily on word association and sound, mimicking schizophrenic thought disorder, whereby words are strung together by sound or puns as opposed to content or syntax, called
clanging associations. Interestingly, the poetry is formally precise as opposed to experimental or freewheeling, despite the abstract language: with the exception of the closing stanza and an epilogue-like poem at the end of the book, each page features five quatrains with an ABBA rhyming structure (most are slant rhymes).
The narrator of the poems has a seemingly imagined or hallucinated companion, Dickey. Along with Dickey, the narrator's family are recognizable characters in the book.
Cramer includes a bibliography of works consulted and inspirations/sources for phrases and puns.
Buy the book:
http://www.sarabandebooks.org/all-titles/clangings-steven-cramer
Read more poems (as well as reviews) here:
http://www.stevencramer.com/clangings/books/
Author's website:
http://www.stevencramer.com
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