Martine Bellen.  2X Squared.  BlazeVox 2010.

Press 1. Volume 4, Number 2, September-December 2010.

In poet Martine Bellen’s new novel 2X Squared, she segues from poetry to prose in a poetic prose way.  This is a surreal upside down journey where a lonely girl-woman, Nora, who is mathematically and linguistically creative, looks for her identity, and her identical twin, Rona, whose name is an anagram for her own.  She has always felt as if she were part of someone else.  And when she meets Rona, she knows it is her own half self. The book is topsy turvey, full of images, shadows and mirrors, the metaphors and concerns of the narrator continually rotate back to twinning. And there is a linguistic playfulness, serious and not so serious.  To give you an idea:

since fog is adorned with no solid form; therefore, fog is adorned with the fog’s no solid form. Fog is the killing of fog adorned with no solid form. Fog is the form of fog adorned with no solid form. Therefore fog is fog as fog and fog is not fog as fog. (65)

Since fog is adorned with no solid form, fog is adorned with the fog’s no solid form. Fog is the killing of fog adorned with no solid form. Therefore fog is fog as fog and fog is not fog as fog.  (63)

It’s the only story I’ve been told about my birth,

told to me by my stepmother, who was magnatized by fog, who is fog

not moisture, not cloud

adorned with no solid form 

Bellen merges everything she reads and hears into this story, making us remember oh so many other writers and friends.  Googling and goggling and myspacing, the first person narrator imagines, theorizes, remembers, and analyzes every myth or story about twins as she tries to find her sister.   Her mother was on fertility drugs. The scientific language of doubling.  The story of the Acomo twins.  She’s a dreamy thinking girl-woman on a dreamy journey, telling her story and letting us here and watch her think.  It’s a roller coaster read and if you like roller coasters, you’ll like this book.   📖