Drawing inspiration from Novalis (1772-1801) a poet who, like the other adherents of early German Romanticism, believed in the correspondence between inner and outer worlds, Kwasny divines the palpable and ineffable ways in which inherited traditions--indigenous culture, mythology, romanticism, modernism, surrealism, postmodernism, and more--inform daily life.

Finding inspiration in the mountain West, Kwasny weaves a shimmering web of connections. Reading Novalis in Montana stretches boundaries with a section of "reading poems"--poems in dialogue with romantic and modernist poets, including Ezra Pound, H.D., Novalis, Dickinson, as well as a sequence that is a twenty-first century take on "The Wasteland," included with stunning lyric poems.

Using luxuriant syntax to string together conditional clauses, these poems throw the reader backward and forward within a line and a poem. Alternatively, repetition offers a commentary on meaning, chopping perception into fragments. Combined with a charming self-qualification that deliberately interrupts momentum, this work smartly ties the reader back down to earth.

Throughout details of lived experience emerge--hiking through the Pacific Northwest, helping a friend deal with cancer, sorting through the ruins of a relationship --and yet the interior voice is always tuned to the physical world, envisioning the shared understanding that connects all life.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Published: 01/27/2009
ISBN: 9781571314291
Pages: 96
Weight: 0.30lbs
Size: 8.80h x 6.50w x 0.40d