The epigram to the poem, Nostalgia, observes, “History decomposes into images, not narratives,” Walter Benjamin’s insight could preface the entire volume. Its two sections, In the Museum of Memory and Wonderful World, contain poems which compress the psychological perception of events into singular linguistic tropes. However, they differ in their strategies. Taking from Norman Finkelstein’s description of poem-as-statement versus poem-as-commentary, the first section creates more direct assertions while the second arises from a conversation with the work of Wallace Stevens and Walt Disney. The stance of the first creates rhetoric of direct engagement that ultimately confounds and falls into silence. The second attempts to avoid this problem by creating an ongoing community of voices. Straddling these two sensibilities, The Wonderful World advises:
Softcover: 63 pages
5 x 8 inches
It does no good
Looking in. Wade
The waist-high meadow
Where unseen tensions
Web the ragweed
Stem to stem

While you
The mythic beast
Among the host
Able to say yes
To this abundance
Or say no
Scrape by
Saying both