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Exile, or auditions for utopia, in a time before this
The Book of Landings brings together the second and third parts of Mark McMorris's visionary trilogy "Auditions for Utopia,"—initiated in Entrepôt—and marks two stages in the evolution of the poet's conception of space. The first stage of the collection is the entrepôt, a space where disparate vectors of identity congregate, come into conflict, and finally merge into hybrid forms. The poetry follows a trajectory of diaspora, or exile, instigated by conquest, colonialism, wars, and political defeat in the search for Utopia. In The Book of Landings the promised dwelling has been removed from the realm of physical geography, and there is only transition—fragmentary episodes of arrival and departure, in transit from one entrepôt to another. These episodes of transit do not only compose a linear sequence only. Instead, they define a space or surface marked by repeated traversals over time—tracings and, importantly, re-tracings, by explorers, conquerors, migrants, merchants, slaves, refugees, and exiles—a city of palimpsests. An online reader's companion will be available at markmcmorris.site.wesleyan.edu.
Acknowledgments
The Fragility of Writing: Notes on a Trilogy
FRAGMENTS FROM A TIME BEFORE THIS
I
12 Rectangles
Line Drawings
The Book of Landing
II
Pidgin Geometry
III
While We're Waiting
CITY OF PALIMPSESTS
I. PLANTATION
Gun Carriage at Old Fort
The Great House in Various Light
Birds as More Than Metaphor
Letters to Michael
Dear Michael (26)
Artifact of Beginnings
Practical Green Table
Worksong
Paradise and Plantation
Untitled One
Untitled Two
And this shall seldom chance
Letters to Michael
Dear Michael (21)
II. MARRAKECH
The Drums of Marrakech
Letters to Michael
Dear Michael (22)
Dear Michael (23)
Records
III. BARCELONA
Barcelona Series
IV. LAST LETTERS
Letters to Michael
Dear Michael (24)
Dear Michael (25)
The Last City
MARK MCMORRIS's most recent poetry collections are Entrepôt and The Café at Light. He is a two-time winner of the Contemporary Poetry Series Prize, and has received The Gertrude Stein Award in Innovative American Poetry. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, he is professor of English at Georgetown University.
"McMorris's poems resemble an entrepôt: polyglot, starling in their juxtapositions, alive to crossings of sound and sense. Perhaps Morris wants us to understand poetry as a meeting place that is both inseparable from and other to actual sites of violent exchange."
~Ben Lerner, Harper's Magazine
""McMorris's poems resemble an entrepôt: polyglot, starling in their juxtapositions, alive to crossings of sound and sense. Perhaps Morris wants us to understand poetry as a meeting place that is both inseparable from and other to actual sites of violent exchange.""
~Ben Lerner, Harper's Magazine
""The poetry follows a trajectory of diaspora, or exile, instigated by conquest, colonialism, wars, and political defeat in the search for Utopia. In The Book of Landings the promised dwelling has been removed from the realm of physical geography and there is only one transition- fragmentary episodes of arrival and departure, in transit from one entrepôt to another.""
~Prairie Schooner
"In his willingness and ability to acknowledge atrocities as well as paradises, Mark McMorris is a powerful voice in the reshaping of lyric poetry, and of restoring the genre to real historical and social relevance."
~Lyn Hejinian, author of My Life and My Life in the Nineties
"In these final two books of his compelling trilogy, Mark McMorris asks how poetry can embody the world's cultural flows and upheavals, its dark sites and pinnacles of light. The Book of Landings should engage any reader interested in an exploratory poetics that transcends national boundaries and enters into that essential conversation among the here and the there, the now and the then, and the when. A moving and illuminating accomplishment.""
~Michael Palmer, author of Thread
"The Book of Landings continues Mark McMorris's fascination with using the space of the page to figure movements of mind in history. Here again we find line drawings wending among the words, asking such questions as, how do we configure the losses against the legacies [of diaspora]? How do the varied tongues of our geographies inflect one another? In these haunting poems, the words float to us bounded by what has been torn away from them.""
~A. L. Nielsen, author of A Brand New Beggar
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