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Only More So

Only More So is a large-scale non-narrative prose poem composed using Lopez’s variation of what Ron Silliman (1987) called the ‘New Sentence’ method of composition, ultimately derived from Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons (1914) and How to Write (1931). Unlike the Language writers’ ‘New Sentence’ autobiographical compositions (such as Hejinian’s My Life, 1980 and Silliman’s Tjanting, 1981) this project is information rich, incorporating the Poundian tradition of research-led composition as developed in the Malatesta Cantos.

The book Only More So is a collage of found text, composed by collecting and editing sentences and assembling them into 100 prose sections each of 55 sentences long. The sentences are combined in non-consecutive arrays from which the reader is expected to construct a kind of continuity, resonance, and self-reference. The writing is genuinely and fundamentally experimental in its processes but the point is not to display a crude, unfinished or difficult surface, on the contrary, the aim is a prose with the kind of finish, compression and ease of reading achieved in the verse writing of Lopez’s earlier book False Memory (2003). If sufficient care is taken in composition, the reader naturalises the collaged text and incorporates its particular aesthetic qualities, making connections and developing their own priorities of significance and thematic coherence. This compositional practice attempts to recover fragmented knowledge in our divided culture.

‘Only More So’ samples popular science journals Nature, New Scientist and Scientific American, and specialist non-fiction literature in for example history, ecology, medicine, archaeology, psychology, pharmacology, art, literary theory, architectural history, music, teacher education, sociology, environmental science, evolution and genetics, management, holocaust studies, marketing, meteorology and linguistics. The desired effect is a level compositional field of language in which specialised elements are presented seemingly without hierarchical control.

This 81,000-word prose poem is the outcome of a large-scale research project in creative practice undertaken over more than ten years. Its impetus was the AHRC funded project ‘Covers’ which examined a wide range of procedural compositional forms in twentieth-century poetic writing including collage. Having identified a formal procedure that could be extended into unknown and unexplored subject areas, Lopez’ project ‘seams’ together language from a wide range of specialised fields of learning with the aim to communicate the challenge of unscalable contemporary knowledge and its impact on individual consciousness.