Transfer of Qualities - Tapa blanda

"Ronk's 10th collection takes as its central tenet the idea that people and objects engage in a deep kind of transference... desires and thoughts are imprinted on the thing, and some aspects of the thing rub off on the person." --"Publishers Weekly" Publishers Weekly" Martha Ronk places before us a series of such freighted objects objective correlatives, dialectical images, call them what you will. These are objects material or written which collapse time, reshaping the perspectives of their owners. It may seem strange to the contemporary reader that such an occupation still bears our attention, especially when objects in our grasp tend to epitomize disposability (how quickly the iPhones replace themselves!), but Ronk s work clarifies just how rare and crystallizing these moments of recognition tend to be. Benjamin Landry, The Rumpus" Ronk's collection of "various objects," books, photograms, people and portraits dominate the collection, which moves from prose to lineated poems, to essays, to brief passages of nonfiction, seguing into topics of representation, death, mourning, love, and intimacy with the physical world.--Editors "Publishers Weekly" (9/1/2013 12:00:00 AM) "Martha Ronk places before us a series of such freighted objects--objective correlatives, dialectical images, call them what you will. These are objects--material or written--which collapse time, reshaping the perspectives of their owners. It may seem strange to the contemporary reader that such an occupation still bears our attention, especially when objects in our grasp tend to epitomize disposability (how quickly the iPhones replace themselves!), but Ronk's work clarifies just how rare and crystallizing these moments of recognition tend to be."--Benjamin Landry, The Rumpus "Publishers Weekly" (9/1/2013 12:00:00 AM) Ronk's collection of -various objects,- books, photograms, people and portraits dominate the collection, which moves from prose to lineated poems, to essays, to brief passages of nonfiction, seguing into topics of representation, death, mourning, love, and intimacy with the physical world.--Editors, Publishers Weekly Ronk s collection of various objects, books, photograms, people and portraits dominate the collection, which moves from prose to lineated poems, to essays, to brief passages of nonfiction, seguing into topics of representation, death, mourning, love, and intimacy with the physical world. Editors, Publishers Weekly"

Transfer of Qualities addresses the uncanny and myriad ways in which people and things, but also people and those around them, exchange qualities with one another, moving in on, unsettling: altering stance, attitude, mood, gesture. Each entry in the book probes the dissolving boundaries between those sharing space with one another; and the various cross-genres in the book--prose poem, creative non-fiction, personal essay--echo the theme of inter-dependence. Material things often seem amazingly alive and tropic--a puppet or toy, a plate, a rug underfoot, a dim photograph on the wall across the way--and this collection follows in the footsteps of other authors also obsessed with the boundaries between life and death, the moving and the still, the stone-like book and the vivid stirring within the pages. There are many authors behind Transfer of Qualities, but the major genie of the piece is Henry James whose musings on his own, The Sacred Fount, provided the book's title and direction.