Vernon Frazer is back at Unlikely Books after a ten-year absence, and we're thrilled to present his newest tome of textovisual poetry, Nemo under the League. This folio-sized book has more of the wild imagery and unbelievable layouts you've come to expect from Frazer.
And check out what people are saying about Nemo under the League:
At first glance, these poems look like somewhat archaic newspaper ad layouts, but there’s much more going on here. These “SNEAKY MESSAGES MEANDER” through “CORTICAL TEMPLATES” – visual poems as fields for the eye/mind to wander in non-linear ways, as if these were paintings full of delights for the eye. Frazer has, in the past, used his poetry as scores for vocal performance, and accompanied himself with his double bass in free improv style, effectively fusing vocal, instrumental, and visual score as multi-media art.
The energetic variety of fonts, shapes, positionings, and interspersed text make each page an artwork to contemplate in which the reader is free to choose the direction of reading. Frazer’s highly visual web of words and phrases encourages the construction of multiple meanings and narratives, all of which make these poems endlessly fascinating.
Graphics include the use of parentheses connected by dashes or juxtaposed with forward slashes, arrows, or parallel lines. Dashed lines connect, outline, and often curve with texts flowing on top, perhaps preceded and/or followed by directive arrows. Vertical, horizontal, and diagonal lines of texts can be grouped by angulated reading, or they can breakup/intermingle due to arrows or gradations of tone, font, and size. Texts are inside contrasting shapes or purposefully mirrored. The use of cylinders, blocks, triangles, ovals, rectangles, and pentagons are carefully considered compositional elements carrying bold headliner text in poetic phrasing. Smaller font groups of more traditionally set poetic texts often sit at angles to retain movement; and though whispered in our ears, Frazer’s words are always sonically energizing.
Poems in the book begin with “Hanging Loose”and “Cold Wave”, and finish with the book’s title piece - “Nemo under the League”. There is a forceful flow to all these poems and some references to fish, the weather, and forces of nature; but nautical terminology is most pervasive in the title poem at the end of the book. A theme is suggested by the title “Nemo under the League”. There’s a hint of a contemporary connection to the Disney film about Nemo the lost fish, but primarily it’s a literary connection to the novel “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” by Jules Verne, published in 1873. Captain Nemo is a primary character in the novel, and “nemo” is Latin for "nobody”. Frazer’s poetry at its best delves into the subterranean waters of the subconscious, where he writes “the last word cast overboard/ definition matter soaked/ in the lumbago sea with Carthage”.
—C. Mehrl Bennett and John M. Bennett
Vernon Frazer is a poetic universe unto himself. He is both a poet of great verbal skill as well as visual and formal invention. In Nemo under the League, his latest collection, Frazer is once again mining the depths of his imaginative form with a breathtaking array of pieces that fuse language and symbols into a kaleidoscopic wonderland of play. The visual and verbal equivalent of a Cecil Taylor recording, the texts virtually jumping off the page. A wild ride through the possibilities of poetic form with little regard for sense or convention, which is partly what makes Frazer’s work and especially Nemo under the League such a wonderous and inspiring book.
Each page is filled to the brim with delights, almost overwhelming to the eye, nearly every inch accounted for with something beautiful, mysterious, disorienting, and always fascinating. The fonts, shapes, lines, and words spring from the page, sometimes almost shrieking. Your eye forced to jump around to meet the challenges of Frazer’s inimitable visual style of poetry. Nemo under the League is the kind of book you have to adapt to in order to fully appreciate its rhythms and idiosyncrasies. This is the kind of poetry in which the reader must be an active participant, oftentimes having to rotate the individual page or peer deeply into the matrix to untangle the dense web of superimposed words and shapes.
I find myself constantly enthralled (and frankly jealous) of Frazer’s inventions, more often than not wishing I had thought of them myself. There is nothing easy or casual about Nemo under the League, which is exactly why it’s so delightful to read. You feel yourself a part of the work, which makes demands on you as the reader to not only abandon your perceived notions about what poetry is supposed to be but to also explore the page to its fullest, with all the twists and turns in order to create your own sense of meaning from the chaos. It’s liberating!
In Frazer’s work, the page is alive. Nothing is ever dull or mediocre. There are none of the tired poetic cliches or recycled imagery and lame devices we’ve all grown so accustomed to. Frazer’s work is endlessly readable because he always wants to create something unique on each page. You cannot read his work without being fully engaged with it because, if you do, you will never be able to appreciate its playful intricacies.
Vernon Frazer is a poet committed to innovation and like all innovative artists, his work deserves an audience willing to go down the rabbit hole with him. There is more life, energy, and invention on one page of Nemo under the League than most conventional poets can conjure up in a lifetime. There is reward in the work. Each page is a volcano.
Not only is Nemo under the League filled with a boundless collection of visual and formal inventions, but it also contains a cavalcade of memorable phrases, images, and linguistic delights. From “sweltering velcro tights” to “where feral cows beef over pork rind follies” or “an addendum filling the bovine gasp,” Frazer never ceases to conjure one glorious absurdity after another in a breathless accumulation of chaos. Images collide grotesquely, beautifully, ludicrously, obscurely, all flowing madly, swirling around the pages, in the margins, slanted, turned, manipulated, elongated, squeezed, some gigantic, some tiny. As one line promises, “the page unleashed.” Or “decibel creation extravaganza.” Many lines could be poems unto themselves, such as “when ventures call for sutured catacombs” or “a viscous entropy sticker.” I could go on and on. Like a great jazz improvisor, Frazer riffs and searches, fusing high and low, the mundane and the profound, all in the name of freedom and exploration.
Nothing I can write, no line I can quote from Nemo under the League can truly replicate or summarize the experience of reading the book. All I can suggest is for those adventurous readers who relish formal experimentation, demand difficulty, eschew sense and logic, and, above all, seek work that is wild, full of life and invention, which constantly gives you something new beyond your expectations, to cherish Nemo under the League in all its glory and find something new and exciting with each reading.
—Joshua Martin
