Cells of Absolute Property, by Ariel Beller

Poetry, chapbook, 44 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Typed out exactly as it appeared from a handwritten journal, this poetry sequence shows a complete disregard for traditional literary forms, punctuation, grammar, or even an individual style.  Much of it is lifted language, and the numbers in this long sequences are in fact the page numbers written on the pages of the original journal.  The book is the author’s response to the typed-out journal of another writer, which he found to be absolutely awful.  

The conceit lay within its opening quote by Henry Miller, "One speaks of man’s potential nature as though it were a contradiction of the one he reveals."

"I love to imagine Beller's Cells of Absolute Property as 74 separate speaking roles for nearly any group chorus scenario possible: members of HAVI (Health Alliance For Violence Intervention) quarterly meeting notes, final journal entries of British soldiers missing after Battle of New Orleans (War of 1812), Pelican Bay State prisoners daydreams, unused dialogue for most Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz, Oceanic Flight 815 survivors cave poems sketched in chalk. Another interesting statistic: for every 74 people there is one Seventh-day Adventist on earth, much to the chagrin of the Seventh-day Adventists. Beller's work is a constant reminder that in order to appreciate sanguine singularity, it first takes a lot of listening to other haunted people talk."

—Jeffrey Hecker, author of Ark Aft

"A cell can mean an organism, a fatal disease, a clandestine social movement, an 'accomodation' in jail, holy religious confinement. Ariel Beller's Cells of Absolute Property may be all or none of these things; but poetry is at its most beautiful, and paradoxically accessible, as a mystery. These enigmatic sequences, which recall C.D. Wright's Deepstep Come Shining, are cells run amok as Delbert Grady or Teletubbies bouncing from fantasia to fantasia. In this surrealist family chronicle (if that's what it is), the grotesque is also as sweet and comforting as oatmeal. Technicolor bursts of DMT in the minds of the dying? Wayward auditory ectoplasm splattering in people's faces? Delirium tremens? Remorseful spirits wringing their non-hands? Sure, if you like. Rivers, fences, hills, and apparitions abound in this uncanny valley, and the overall vibe is wyrdly pastoral and domestic. Whatever you see here, go ahead and follow it home."

—Lisa A. Flowers, Founding Editor of Vulgar Marsala Press

"These Cells of Absolute Property are a matter of life and death. They build and swarm and multiply repeatedly in a small, caged set of human beings. Beller, crucially, understands the number of characters in our play is rather small, even though they explode on the page through so many faces—in all their romance and history. The best writers know you have to go into it. That it’s all rooted in the blood and that if you go into it properly it glows, glows evenly on all our beauty and defects. The power and truth of the blood is that it never lies."

—Rauan Klassnik, author of Holy Land, The Moon’s Jaw and A Slow Boiling Beach

Ariel Beller was born in Portland, Oregon. He lived as an expat in the UK from 2001-2014, where he was a recipient of the Michael Donaghy Memorial Prize. His work has appeared with Driftwood Press, Amsterdam Quarterly, Queen Mobs Teahouse, Exquisite Corpse, Luna Luna, Tears in the Fence (UK), Gobbet (UK), The Wolf (UK), As it Ought To Be, Trnsfr Books, and many other places.