When Correlation is Causation - by Heikki Huotari (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Each of the poems in When Correlation is Causation is a framing, celebration or random cancellation of the events of the preceding 24 hours, often as a slant scientific proof or spontaneous statistical analysis, with appropriate attention paid to the theater of the absurd, to stand-up comedy, to mourning for hire, to throwing elbows at kitchen sinks and to many a source of fortune and their lapdog. On the other hand, each poem is an experiment: a new half-life crisis every day, a barely recognizable sports car, so wants to be seen as something new and different. The title of the volume is, as are many of the poems, intended to recognize the ability of a metaphor to induce change, e.g., if eating ice cream is correlated with sunburn then eating ice cream leads to being abducted by aliens. The author learned in graduate school that, as does the zero vector, any symbol worth its salt will point with equal enthusiasm in all directions. What it's all about is either Alfie or the Hokey Pokey and the lyric poet doesn't presume to choose, but they cordially invite you to. A sentence from one of the poems presents this invitation as an opportunity: "The path of least resistance far from fixed, what this continuum is missing is concurrent birdsong."

This collection of 79 experimental poems uses language as a form of dance, taking us into realms of wonder.

Review Quotes

It seems that Heikki Huotari's poetry knows no boundaries. I come across poems that remind me of those old Rube Goldberg contraptions. Others have a keen intimacy with nature like the illustrations in Sibley's bird guides. A poem of Huotari's can seem to lead me on a wild goose chase with no purpose other than to confuse me, then, pow, a line slams into my heart and puts me deeply in touch with myself and my place in the universe, whether either exists or not. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Descartes!

-Stefanie Marlis, author of Slow Joy.

Heikki Huotari's poems oscillate between intense moments of scientific clarity and absurdist pirouettes that remind us that, while the world may be a dance of entropic chaos screened by a thin veneer of rational apology, the universe is "largely laughing matter." His work is absolute proof that Surrealism is not dead.

-Chris Howell