Full Description
"Dark archive": The purpose of a dark archive is to function as a repository for information that can be used as a failsafe during disaster recovery. Laura Mullen's fourth collection is a sequence of beautifully interrelated poems that explores how to accurately represent the reality of change and loss. Mullen pinpoints what is at stake: the possibility of communication and connection - and the hope of intimacy. Invoking Wordsworth's 'I wandered lonely as a cloud,' she pushes experiments in consciousness against their boundaries in an array of poetic forms. Poetic tropes are measured against natural phenomena as Mullen examines what 'witness' might mean in the context of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the failures of capitalism to effect social justice, the murder of James Byrd in Texas, the personal loss of a mother figure, and a disintegrating love affair.
Contents
System Acknowledgments Cloud Cover window/ candle No Voice In the Space between Words Begin Remediation Attempt I Wandered Networks like a Cloud The Author Is Not I Wandered (Phony) As By and By Little Landscape I Wandered Her Voice The Proofs Arrive As Stratocumulus Prose Poem White Box Original Material Studying Clouds (A Trick of the Light) Parts of Speech Sound Barrier Cloud as Lonely Images, Similes, Some Alliteration Collide and Coalesce Code The White Box of Mirror Dissolved Is Not Singular Passages Turn If TURN OWN STRING A POOL POOLS IN YOU INSIDE WREST WORD CLOUD NO ON COINAGE EX SELF EXPANSION EXPANSION WILDERNESS HERE MATTER EAST LAST TRUTH HOUSE MATERIALS PUBLICITY TRUTH END POLIS IS SPACE SAME SAME NAME CRIME EXAMPLE AMERICA INTERPRETING TURNING THINGS UTTER UTTERLY Troposphere Pass Cloud Seeding: From a Journal The Visual World behind My Head Virga Orographic (Stratus) Endlessness Cloud Money Message Daisies On a Clear Day Love (Stratus) Love (Stratus Opacus) Love (Opacus) Love (Scud) Edge of There Love (Altocumulus Translucidus & Altostratus Opacus) Desire (Pieces from the Broken Roof of an Abandoned Passage) After-Image (Louisiana Company) Spoke of a Blueprint Should Have Ended The Motif Modifies Space Even in My Dreams the Knowledge Ghost Mist Evaporation / Condensation
