Micro-Review: Left Having

In his second full-length collection Left Having from Kenning Editions, Jesse Seldess explores the possibilities of repetition, “[r]egardless the echo that it takes.” To wit, even if "the airwaves" (i.e. our vocalizations of these poems) end up being "broke signaling" that sound "Across the shattered airwaves // Across the scattered airwaves," the auditory momentum of these lines carries us through words that are "gathered as by some order." True, each poem therein "falls apart on its own over time," at least in the sense that they cease to communicate salient information, but this hardly seems to be the point. Instead, the poems function as texts that "String...the words together to keep [us] warm." Warmth, it could be argued, functions synecdochically for all physical or affective reactions we have to these poems. As such, when signification "falls apart," our bodies begin to "warm" up so as "to be reformed" into echo-machines that produce "One word after the other." But why would one want to cast-off meaning in favor of sound? The answer, perhaps, can be found in the final poem, titled "End": "Separating // Thought" from words affords us the opportunity to "happen," which is to be, existing in the moment.