The Network by Jena Osman

The title of the first section of The Network, "The Knot", is entirely appropriate because the book is a knotting together of seemingly disparate strands of historical, social and cultural knowledge. The book luxuriantly wades through a discussion of Osman's poetics, the Philadelphia Mummers Parade, the iconic nature of The Joker, the Franklin Artic exposition, and the volcanic American financial system. Osman's exploration and teezing-out of language in the book is a direct manifestion of her poetic method, which she lays out in the opening pages: "I follow Cecilia Vicuna's instruction to use an etymological dictionary: "'To enter words in order to see.'" She charts the etymology of certain terms like Security, Credit, Money, and Peace which have nearly lost all meaning in the American idiom, in order to create a multiplicity of meanings. By her method she begins to unravel the roots of our current economic and social woes. The Network combines documentary, prose, conceptual and lyrical poetry and applies them to subjects that should be examined in-depth in our media, but never are. The result is an revelatory experience on the part of the reader, which refutes W. H. Auden's notion that "poetry makes nothing happen." With this book one feels that the techtonic plates of language have shifted in unexpected and influential ways.