Eliot Cardinaux: A Species of This Invaded World

There’s a doubled long-poem (think Nate Mackey’s Mu/Song of the Andoumboulou) sounding its way out over the flood plains of the Connecticut River outside Northampton MA. Over a series of volumes published in 2024-5, Eliot Cardinaux (who has one foot in jazz piano and the other kicking pine needles on a trail in Shutesbury) has been developing a numbered sequence of 3-4 stanza open form poems (often dedicated) alongside their Mile Marker suite. A Species of this Invaded World gives us XXVI-L of the first, and miles 72-100 of the second. Mile markers along the highway mark a trip you are always in the midst of, whether you are on foot or in a car. Breaths in and out. Quiet, clear brush-stroke perfect songs (in couplet or 2-3 word lines). The world that is not adequate we have to get through. The work of the walk set to a lyric and its two-step of gratitude, unresolved difficulty, and praise. The numbered suite brings in the larger world of influence and reading — Paul Celan, Michael Palmer, poets or artists Eliot knows or needs to sing to, their lover Shana. Seeing “the sadness already there” alongside “Michael Palmer / putting pressure on memory to remind itself / of air / from the underground springs / beneath / Walter Benjamin’s Berlin.” The “Small place, there, for / memory finding one- / self on stage, in shock,” that is also “rainwater’s reverb / a distant / siren / cars rushing by / quotidian / the wind.” Poems that “Reach out / to power with a / spell, the tendrils of / which are your eyes.” Big music over Emily’s grave.

—David Need, author of Sweetbitter & Broken Windows

The poems in this book are suffused with urgency and necessity in existential meaning-making. These poems break the barriers between reason and unreason. This poet is an unconventional (stylistically, thematically) explorer of consciousness, friendship, landscape, the miraculous. Eliot Cardinaux’s voices in A Species of This Invaded World are unjaded, questioning, vital. We are warned: “but don't be so sure / how I feel / or what / I think of you.” Be ready to be awed.

—Uche Nduka, author of Bainbridge Island Notebook & To Umber