Guide to the Exhibit

by Lisa Allen Ortiz

Guide to the Exhibit is the winner of the 2016 Perugia Press Prize. Inspired by displays at a small natural history museum, the poems in Lisa Allen Ortiz's collection, Guide to the Exhibit, are about what we set aside to examine and remember. The quirky, scientific lens--grimy, focused, funny, always illuminating--animates the odd and overlooked. With humility and curiosity, Ortiz is moved to learn how to see more clearly both as lover and as griever. Speaking the names of things--animals, skeletons, teeth, feathers--is a way of connecting with the complications of being alive. How does the stillness of an exhibit encourage us toward love and joy? Does studying details increase the pleasure of felt experience? Ortiz is paying close attention to love while death and sorrow lurk nearby. "Survival is the mutest joy," she writes. Guide to the Exhibit looks outward and reflects, examines, links, and contradicts.

Genres: Poetry

78 pages, Paperback

Published September 15, 2016

Reviews

[Karin · Rating 5 out of 5]

An astounding collection. Must read for poetry lovers, word lovers, lovers.

[Pamela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ortiz fills these poems with the fabulous lexicon of natural history. I enjoyed her involvement with diction. Thoroughly loved this book.

[Kamali Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

very fun read and reading this for my internship. very different from the poetry i read but overall amazing experience especially in nature in each poem!!