Afterrimages

by Joan Retallack

Retallack's book draws readers into a meditative experience of time, space and language.

Joan Retallack offers a book of forms, like the medieval Book of Hours, intended to draw readers into a meditative experience of time, space, language, the many humors of chance and design, as they intersect and leave their traces on the page. All of civilization to date, all of history is after all aftermath, afterthought, afterimage. The language graphics of AFTERRIMAGES lay claim to the fragility―the gift, the terror, and the whimsy―of the remnant that all images are. Their playful nature is born of the conviction that the present tense―tense, tensile with immanent futurity―must extend itself toward the unintelligible and unknown. This is the frontier where the image hovers on the edge of its own transfiguration, the threshold where poetry can take place.

Genres: Poetry

115 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of those books that while reading feeling the whole world opening out because, some kind of freedom in the writing? it is non-linear and experimental (to say the least) with format, punctuation, images, and thoughts. when poetry is like this, non-linear and free and experimental, yet still tied to a concept that is out there somewhere in the stratosphere, it writes you a whole new brain as you are reading! hooray for letting go of the self in the search of something more important. like language.