“Arrogance is the path / we took to the end of the world, it’s our / only asset.” Luke Bloomfield reviews Alex Phillips’ Crash Dome, a book-length poem that wanders through the psyche of someone who has lost his hold on the familiar world.

Alex Phillips’ Crash Dome (2010) is a book-length poem that wanders through the psyche of someone who has lost his hold on the familiar world. He becomes estranged from the present and wary of the future. The resultant is a voice whose strength is its fragility, attempting to make sense of reality turned inside-out. Vestiges of a prior existence—one that was fully socialized to modern culture—appear throughout the poem as particulars among a steady current of surprise, inquiry, and anxiety.

Released by Factory Hollow Press—top-shelf small press which also published Phillips’ chapbook Under A Paper Trellis (2006)—Crash Dome is a document of over-internalization that should, and can easily be read in one sitting (more on that later). I’ve found the danger of reading this book pleasant—much like the danger posed by other great books (The Book of Disquiet, for example)—the danger being that my own ability to act appropriately in a social environment becomes disturbed, which is why it is best not to go out after reading it. At the same time, the impulse to curl into the fetal position and stare unblinkingly at a spot on the floor does no good either; Facebook is definitely no solace (actually, the opposite of solace), and the Internet in general becomes acutely terrifying. I only mention these responses as a testament to this book’s effectiveness as a needle in the brain.

Yet there is something uniquely alive in Crash Dome, which attempts to awaken some primitive aspect of consciousness. Once the gradual severing from all the signifiers that give the voice security is complete, fearful loneliness sets in, and in this desolation, startling and beautiful revelations occur, such as “Arrogance is the path/we took to the end of the world, it’s our/only asset.”

Crash Dome is not for the lazy or faint of spirit. Phillips deftly integrates poetic accessories by establishing a context in which arbitrary appearances are justified by the larger framework of the poem:

     but the idea of a more productive
     disharmony makes me feel like packing
     my pickle fork and my garish but utilitarian wallet
     and walking, walking in spite of the forests
     of people, flora, and fauna,
     the slithering parasites and vodka merchants.

And at 60 some odd pages, Crash Dome is epic, when nowadays what usually passes as epic are Lost marathons, fast food binges, procrastination and failure. So just when I thought the Epic was forever pickled, interred, abandoned to a handful of academics, here came along Crash Dome. And, conversely, what a reassurance it is indeed to be able to finish it in one sitting, for, without stanza breaks, there is no stopping place except the end. I feel the kind of satisfaction typically gleaned from reading much longer works, which speaks to Crash Dome’s ability to render a unified experience through repeated narrative disjunction and a palpable forward thrust. In a time when popular poetics are fragments of banalities wittily grafted onto quasi-narrative structures—“projects”—Crash Dome is a force that stands apart, truly a worthwhile read.

Crash Dome is available now from Factory Hollow Press.

Luke Bloomfield lives and writes in New York. He is the editor of the online literary journal notnostrums.