Susan Gardner's Herso: An Heirship in Waves -- a response by j/j hastain

Susana Gardner’s herso an heirship in waves is an investigative beast-- “an endless seaming conquest” (not seeming conquest, not typical conquest at all) wherein non-traditional investigations of the pronoun and the place and the presence her occur. Note please this book’s acts of tonal seaming.

(  “the female as an index”/“a saint her”  )

I feel this book as an application. A “throated proliferant”—strengthening the places in readers that have perhaps become loose or fatigued or inverted.  This is subliminal coax. A coming to through. Oh how I believe in this method of engagement!

I think that this work is only proportionately autobiographical. Becoming “self-important [to itself, to herself] again.” “Things still scattered about as always, scattered in a pattern only she could recognize”—then it becomes somehow autonomous to itself. “Beautiful in grandeur, awful in its form.”

I really enjoyed feeling like I could get lost in this book.  Lost like one can get lost in music. I appreciated the literal, figural presence of sound. I so enjoy being conducted! The waves of herso got into the waves extant in my own brimming body.

Is the sea and is my body itself not a “secluded wildness?” “In so coming to be born gauntlet of” “overwhelmingly rested halfnotes.”

Now I would like to mention the resting periods in this book. The space between curves of text. The entire pages of visual/textual pressure. These held me into the book. Made me feel like a density interacting with the inter densities of the document. The further and further in the more I felt “her wayward deity”—this book--these movements “an inevitable creational turning.”

“What strange [and lovely] beings” these pages are. Oh “salt. Resurrection”

Susana Gardner’s Herso: An Heirship in Waves is available from SPD.

j/j hastain is the author of numerous full-length cross-genre works such as asymptomatic over // thermodynamic vents (BlazeVox Books),  our bodies are beauty inducers (Rebel Satori Press), and ulterior eden (Otoliths), as well as many chapbooks and artist's books.  j/j's manuscript Let was a finalist in the 2010 Kelsey Street and Ahsahta book competitions.  In 2011 j/j's book we in my Trans ws nominated for the Stonewall Award.