Get lost in Paper City

The older I get the less I understand poetry, but Nathalie Stephens offers enough stable ground to provide a glimpse into a world of slippery text and the vital importance of creativity. Paper City is a meandering prose poem condemning homogeneity and the collapse of real personal expression. Stephens animates letters, the very building blocks of text and language, challenging their usual rigid forms and letting them loose on a playful spree.

The narrative is full of deep intellect and in-jokes. I can’t say that I understood all of the references or the complete significance of the main characters, n and b, iconoclasts who refuse to live within the rules of society or art. Their work is rejected because “The Art World was not ready for nuance.” There is however, a wariness of words, a fear of their capacity for betrayal and the inevitable misdirection of too much studying. Stephens believes that a concentration on the spontaneity of flesh and the body will lead us back in the right direction.

I imagine that the paper city of the title is our thin and empty constructions, our lack of commitment and excessive verbosity. Stephens unambiguously condemns the bravado and fakery that pass for eccentricity and originality in our times —“the floors lit green or yellow or orange from underneath and excessive gesticulation all of which to mask the lack of substance in the lives being lived.” Paper City is about language and play, but it is also a serious manifesto to reject the known and to resurrect the idea that an artist’s reach should exceed her grasp. It is an enjoyable and perplexing work and a call to arms.