Full Description
Who guides us through the unknown? Who offers the keys? In The Perforated Map, Elena Rivera's guide is language as she attempts to navigate the distances, the disturbances, the suggestions, the mistakes, the perforations. In these poems, language is the map, the matter that fills/affects the body, the organizing principle between the self and the world, and the forms that it gives rise to. The sentence is filled with holes. What is graspable between self and other? Is not all language in transit, moving in gradations of light, between knowing and the fuzzy conveyance shaped by words whose meaning is a matter of further adumbrations? How are we able to communicate our experience? How will understanding be sparked? What message is there for the poet/the reader? That is what is at stake in these poems, finding the word, the specific word, to illuminate the way, the experience of life, this moment, this time, this period of history.
Contents
The Perforated Map I Ars Poetica Disturbances in the Ocean of Air The Colors Project I The Colors Project II Crossed Out The Perforated Map II Suggestions at Every Turn The Colors Project III The Colors Project IV The Perforated Map III In the Frame of the Door Poem with a Line Drawn Across the Body When The Shadow Filled Window Opens The Perforated Map IV We Will Be Served Mistakes, Accidents, and a Want of Liberty The Colors Project V The Perforated Map Notes
