ma(I)ze Tassel Retrazos
a collaborative collection of collagic images created by Carlos M. Luis
with corresponding textual interpretations by Derek White
New York, NY: Calamari Press, 2005
ISBN: 0-9746053-9-5
44 pages; hand printed and saddle-stapled;
B & W and color illustrations.

Structured in the fashion of an eighteenth century gothic novel, with each chapter preceded by a descriptive title, this publication at first would seem to follow a traditional aesthetic. But this is both the beginning and the end of any nods to the traditional as this work goes boldly forth to break unproven ground. Materials used include ink, magazine cutouts, and found textiles.

Within these pages we are greeted by virtuous displays of pla(y)giarism, a Raymond Federman innovation, that perhaps describes the underlying ethic at work. We are treated to panels of images, all related albeit tangentially to the textual weaving at work. And weaving is the proper term for this collaborative collection that uses the weaving of fabric as its residing metaphor. The name in the title, Retrazos, a Spanish term meaning ‘retrace’ or ‘stencil’, referring to the remnants left behind by a seamstress, is a word not chosen by some arbitrary selection; its action connects every piece in this title into a whole creation as the seamstress connects her swatches of fabric. The tale begins with the opening phrase, “It started out as a hole in my mother’s courtyard.”

A quaintly simple opening that may hint at a warm and collective union of familial spirit. But what we instead receive is a tale that winds and shapes and moves at will as the seamstress moves through her work until we are left with an assortment of disparate parts that together form a collective whole like no other. As a tone setter, the opening title epitomizes at once the combined excitement and confusion that obtains for the narrator, Going Through Puberty in a Foreign Tongue. If the dramatic changes attending the travel through puberty were not enough, the ante is raised considerably when attempted in a foreign tongue. And we are not entirely sure the perspective of the narrator as he appoints each character in his world names like Corn Tassel, Cabeza de Vaca (Cow Head), Shrimp Cocktail. So a weird and wonderful trip is indeed begun as the narrator leads us through one foreign setting after another, foreign not necessarily in its culture, but in its conveyance. For what is at work here is an undertaking whose unbridled power lies in the world of associative thought, an area tapped into briefly by the Surrealists and the Automatic Writing School. Each, sentence, each phrase, each section is rife with word and image connections whose associative power is forever mutating into new connections upon each visit, the jungle of symbolism triggering connections in your brain which you might not even be aware of. For instance, in the second chapter, Fingering to Inhabit Monkey House, as the narrator and his mother dig a hole in the backyard, the phrase, “I pulled out a used condom and my mother’s first instinct was to blame me for littering. Little did she know I never needed one” is charged with plurality. When a piece of tire is found in the hole, we learn it is a huarache that belonged to the narrator’s father, "This was your father’s… The soles are what he used to call stealth rubber.” In circular fashion the scientific name condom is tied to the street name rubber in an indirect but completely associative way, bringing us round to the secretly held prophylactic device. But this is just one, if the most obvious, connection as this goes on throughout, each fragment giving birth to multiple interpretations at each read. What is steadily at work here is a clever design that exploits what has been employed by the visual arts since its inception, later by consumer marketing, and finally, in this collaborative collection, by the written word. Innovative word play has been used before, but rarely so flagrantly and in such bold artistic style. If the form of the novel has reached exhaustion as the Postmodernists prophesied, it is through boldly experimental risk taking such as this that the future of the novel may be assured. So rest easy doomsayer, by breathing new life into old forms an inventive combinatory form is born, leading the past and present forward into a very bright future.

About the Authors

Images: Carlos M. Luis was born in La Habana, Cuba in 1932.  He left Cuba in ‘62 and settled in New York City until ’79, when he moved to Miami and became the director of the Cuban Museum. As an artist and visual poet he has exhibited his work in a number of galleries around the country and world. He has taught courses and given lectures on a variety of subjects including Renaissance, Cuban and contemporary art, cultural studies, socialism, avant-garde, surrealism and philosophy.  His poetry and essays have been published widely, his most recent book being, ma(I)ze Tassel Retrazos (Calamari Press, 2005). He is married with two sons, a daughter and five grandchildren. 

Text: Derek White lives in NYC and edits SleepingFish.

Life for CB Smith began in a southern part of the northern hemisphere where the heavy misted skies threatened to strangle him in swamps of crocodile infested feculent. Abandoned at birth by Trotskyite revolutionaries he was picked up by a wild crazy eyed trader and transported to a remote Indian jungle where he was raised by a band of itinerate lion-tailed macaque monkeys trying to write Hamlet using IBM Selectric Typewriters. Thus began his life. His essays and surreal fiction have been published in various worldwide e-zines and magazines. His novel/memoir/treatise Still Life With Psychotic Squirrel will be available through Six Gallery Press, Summer 2006.