La parola da casa, Serena Piccoli

The Daily Glance

Amy King’s The People Instruments interested me for many reasons, but mostly for its play in the line. King takes a line and twists it, often through the use of conjunctions or just by eliding thoughts. In reading, I was trying to diagram the sentences in my head.

I report outside
a motion in the line of no one:
my faults my body my legs
thought tentacles among
the rest if it rains, as it’s a desert,
stunning glistening infestations

[With no period, perhaps the next clause attaches here.]

What goes with what here? Does the list after the colon describe the motion? Are the “thought tentacles” a fourth in the series, or are the faults, body, and legs “thought tentacles”? For that matter, are the faults “my body” and “my legs” or are they equals in a series of three (or four)? What is the referent of the parenthetical expression?

The syntactical complexity continues throughout the book. At times, when it feels like we have hit a moment of narrative simplicity, it trails off in new directions.