Kristi Maxwell

Plan/K Kristi Maxwell

Poetry. Following in a long line of acts of piracy by women writers (Kathy Acker's Pussy, King of the Pirates), Kristi Maxwell proves herself a masterful ventriloquist. Slipping her hand into through a card game (Royalty), a children's book, historical documents on sea pirates, and Treasure Island, Maxwell speaks, strikes, through double entendres, puns, homonyms, and jokes--all the devices scorned by the 'original' pirates of linguistic, cultural and political power. PLAN/K--not only Dickinson's plank but also Maxwell's (and Kafka's) plan K (plans A-J always go awry)--engenders alternate subtexts, defrocks priests and denudes emperors: '['where are your manners' 'where are your manners' 'inflected' 'infected' 'affected']) but reads as a He by her mother's (Design / Deceit [by her knowing the Signs by which a Pete is Mister-ed and Sir-ed (Served vs. Serfed)]).]' Meaning radiates in all directions, refusing and submitting to the lure of narrative, the drive to annex: ''Frontier Thesis[: ] [...] Turner's funda (men)tal orientation [turner] to the land.' Though Maxwell sets sail with the infamous pirate(ss) Mary Read, PLAN/K is less a 'whole lotion to cross' than perpetual Brownian motion in the Petri dish of culture, a nervous twitching of semantic, syntactical and grammatical categories. It is also a book sounding the bottoms: ''Gen-Hur on a cherry-it a char[ge]iot (c [as see]-h[e]r-riot!) Mary Read, the woman compelled by her mother to deceive in order to live: '[Mary Read has no Reed (read: Penis; read: Man- Oar).' Oar-less, Maxwell takes a leap--is pushed from the PLAN/K. And adventure begins.--Tyrone Williams