Round Earth, Open Sky
Kirpal Gordon
Giant Steps Press
ISBN: 9780615476735

Reviewer: Michael Adams


          Round Earth, Open Sky is the second novel by New York-based poet and spoken-word artist Kirpal Gordon. At 185 pages, it is twice as long as his first novel, Ghost & Ganga: A Jazz Odyssey, but follows a similar framework and displays the poet’s sensibility towards language, time, and meter. There is a great deal of enjoyment in reading descriptive lines such as, “Sky Man heard not words, but vowel sounds stretching the skins of their consonant clusters.” The descriptions of landscapes and people are rich and full and propel the action forward at a quick clip. Add to this the fact that Round Earth, Open Sky is a road novel, with the inherent speed and drive that comes with that genre, and you have one quick and enjoyable read. None of this is to say that the novel is lightweight. It possesses the rare quality of being able to satisfy both the casual reader, looking for an enjoyable way to pass a summer day, and the serious-minded literatus.

          Like his earlier novel, Ghost & Ganga: A Jazz Odyssey, Round Earth, Open Sky is divided into three parts. I don’t know if there’s any larger meaning to Gordon’s triune division of his books; it could simply be a convenient way to highlight beginning, middle, and end. Working with the plot of Round Earth, Open Sky, I tried to tease out some religious significance to the three-part structure, but was unable to. And admittedly, I didn’t try very hard. The plot centers on a kind of new-age road trip, a postmodern Ken Keysian blending of the myth of Orpheus and Jesus Christ with a Gnostic flavor. Briefly, Sky Man (the primal Adam or Adam Kadmon) is lured to earth, tricked by a sorcerer into entering the body of a dead human. Sky Man is not to be confused with the body he inhabits, though others in the book are continually making this mistake: “Many bodies called Sky Man but only one energy field.” Sky Man’s quest, from this point, is to return to his home in the sky, while at the same time taking “his healing powers out to repair the tear in the world through acts of kindness,” in the words of an unnamed woman living in the Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona. This, by the way, is a quote from the Kaballah, recognized as such by the sidekick that Sky Man soon acquires, the renegade Jewish photographer Moses Abitbol. Abitbol is a North African Jewish name, the Hebrew root of which means to purify in a ritual bath.

          I won’t spend much more time outlining the plot, other than to say that Sky Man, in a journey that takes him from southern Arizona to northern Lake Huron, manages to fulfill his quest, leaving a trail of healed bodies and souls and general good feelings in his wake. In recounting the plot in this way, I don’t mean to say that Round Earth, Open Sky is an airy pastry of a book. It is actually quite substantial. But the substance lies in the depth and richness of the language. The plot, while strong enough to keep the reader’s attention, is primarily the architecture upon which Gordon lays his language. Plot and character, the staples of most novelists, play second fiddle to language for Gordon, as one would expect from a poet turned novelist.

          Sky Man at first has no understanding of human language. He communicates in picture language, mind to mind. As he eats human food, he finds that words are transmitted “in the taste or in the chewing, in the swallowing and digesting of the food.” And so, as he eats, his understanding grows. I think it’s safe to take this as a statement of how Gordon views language, not at all abstract, but as something vital and substantial. I believe Gordon is telling us that words and language grow out of the common, everyday activities of human beings.

          Gordon’s dialogue is quick and snappy. His characters are masters of the quick retort. Take this exchange between Sky Man and Moses concerning a woman whom Moses is hot for. We begin with Sky Man:

Your skin sends the signal.
Is that so?
She receives your signal, sends back her signal.
Are you for real here, I mean, what are you saying.
Magnetic attraction.
Yeah?
Sex musk in her sweat, Moses Dude.
What?
She sweats the same truth as you.

          Just two guys talking about the chances one of them has to score, but what a unique way of saying it.

          Round Earth, Open Sky has the internal logic and meaningfulness of a dream; the most satisfying way to approach the book, perhaps, is to regard it as such. Otherwise there are things that don’t make sense. For example, near the beginning, a crescent moon rises at sunset. In the waking world this is impossible. Since the moon shines by reflected sunlight, a crescent moon will always rise and set near the sun; only a full or near-full moon will rise as the sun is setting. Yet in a dream, there is no contradiction. So, too, the book is full of wolves in places such as the Sonoran Desert that have not heard the howl of a wolf in many decades.

          I recommend Round Earth, Open Sky wholeheartedly to both poets and anyone looking for an enjoyable read. And if you find you like it, don’t hesitate to get Ghost & Ganga: A Jazz Odyssey. I look forward to the next novel by this delightful writer.