Triptychs

Sandra Simonds’s Triptychs is a brilliant intersection of poetic form and the passage of time.

Crafted initially in strips handwritten on rolls of receipt paper obtained at a dollar store, then assembled into three textual columns that sit side-by-side on the page, these triptychs are joined or disjoined in several ways—through diction, through the special relation of words (evoking intimacy, touch or, in contrast, alienation), and through thematic similarities or dissimilarities. Each poem is wildly surprising, ranging from conversations between Baudelaire and Jayne Eyre to the enjoyment of macaroons.  As a result, the poems energize the confines of this writing space as they invite readers to recall painterly constructions and news headlines, wherein each pillar is in conversation with another, sequentially and simultaneously. With the same lyric attention found in all of Simonds’s poetry, the poems here mark an innovative shift in poetics that is both polyvocal and singular.