The Architecture of Language.The Architecture of Language By Quincy Troupe Coffee House Press, October 2006 $24.95, ISBN ISBN abbr. International Standard Book Number ISBN International Standard Book Number ISBN n abbr (= International Standard Book Number) → ISBN m 1-566-89189-2 Having been compared to Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes, Quincy Troupe continues to exhibit a true American aesthetic loaded with descriptive imagery and eye-opening epiphanies in his prosody prosody: see versification. prosody Study of the elements of language, especially metre, that contribute to rhythmic and acoustic effects in poetry. . The responsibility of the poet is to record, dissect dissect /dis·sect/ (di-sekt´) (di-sekt´) 1. to cut apart, or separate. 2. to expose structures of a cadaver for anatomical study. dis·sect v. and postulate language, which Troupe executes dutifully in his latest collections of poems titled The Architecture of Language. In this volume, Troupe challenges himself as a poet even more than he did in his previous collection of poems, Transcircularities: New and Selected Poems (Coffee House Press, 2002). His latest book attests to his dogma that a writer should continuously be in a state of self-discovery. There are seven sections of crafted poems that sing to the reader, as Troupe intersects musicality with language. Imagine, as he writes in the tire poem, "the wind swirling through the blueprint of speech / bare bones of utterances found wrapped there / inside sound, a language, history." Troupe explores language created from an American blueprint rooted in cultural pluralism. The American voice is not a monotone mon·o·tone n. 1. A succession of sounds or words uttered in a single tone of voice. 2. Music a. A single tone repeated with different words or time values, especially in a rendering of a liturgical text. voice, nor is it just connected to our English counterparts. Quite the contrary, Troupe's poems convey that the vernacular of many cultures constitutes today's American lexicon. Troupe's work dissects the human condition, but he does not overtly perpetuate the tenets of the Black Arts Movement The Black Arts Movement or BAM is the artistic branch of the Black Power movement. It was started in Harlem by writer and activist Amiri Baraka (born Everett LeRoy Jones). to express his messages. Equally worth noting, Troupe demonstrates his ease in using haiku haiku (hī`k  ), an unrhymed Japanese poem recording the essence of a moment keenly perceived, in which nature is linked to human nature. and lyrical narrative as intellectual discourse. The Architecture
of Language is weighted with fables, lessons and odes. As a reader, I
find myself returning to these poems to ensure I didn't miss
anything.
Randall Horton is the author of The Definition of Place (Main Street Rag, 2006). |
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