A Side. Dedicated contents introduce alternate businesses. 'Two's company,' details the eco-lady. In an emporium economy, fancy fortfications resort to gentrification while friendly fire goes on holiday, and household units for resale, duly scouted and sketched, stagger the sole survivor. An audience cheers. The party was a gas, historically documented as wild. Early next morning, we rove various terrain, dotted with polluted and unpolluted waters, an expanse of land, normally made up, that today is naked. Fortification Resort counts on guests. Driving to the farm, mid-morning, four vacationing professionals walk in a classic children's series. Hands in gloves, guests arrive. Once, our village bustled. Now, it is dark, nestled at the bottom of towering circular walls.

B Side. Expressions of high stimulation include instructional pictures: hook, line, sinker. Then, after all their thinking good-naturedly together, the tides of our river deliver a chilly spring -- which leads our day-time spa manager (an ambling bull) to remind us that what glistens bright is always sporty. This, to our ears, means specific mind-body treatments in our Mean Sex building. Because, it so happens, that between our recent UFO abduction and the current snake situation, real skin damage has resulted. And so another season passes, irreversibly deformed by heat, alarm and force, leaving only fish and foliage in its wake.

Coda. Although presented as a collection of pieces, each torqued to its own specifics, the sum of Fortification Resort so far exceeds such discretion that the book comprises a single and singularly habitable narrative. A narrative, but not a fiction; it's as real as real can be. Based more and less strictly on the protocols of the sestina (a poetic form attributed to the 12th century troubadour Arnaut Daniel), these pitch-perfect meditations on works by contemporary Detroit artists are at once acts of homage, cautionary tales, and front-line dispatches from the gated community that is our vast, goofy, benighted, and perennially insecure homeland. They are also beautifully composed throughout and imbued with deep if wry compassion for the improbable motley that we are.

Lynn Crawfordis Fortification Resort was published in 2005 by Black Square Editions.

Lynn Crawford's Fortification Resort

by Ted Pearson

 
more columns by Ted Pearson