Publisher's Synopsis
These poems function as experiments in epistemology. Attentive to the ways that sensory experiences coalesce into cognition and the ways cognition remains always thoroughly sensory, these poems experiment with the complex ways in which being in the world means thinking with one's whole body. By occupying a variety of shifting subject positions, making use of various forms (both traditional and nonce forms), and engaging both explicitly and implicitly with texts from various traditions, these poems seek to address the cognitive, spiritual and erotic experiences, longings and desires that come with living in the material world.These concerns come into especially intense focus in the Creature poems. While the Creature is as human as anyone else, he has certain misgivings about the old term 'human,' especially insofar as it is associated with hierarchical notions of human domination that can sometimes slide into abuse. The Creature poems explore the subject's continuity with the world, including the world of artifice and technology. The Creature longs for a deeper connection to the world and to the divine, though he can experience great confusion about where to find either. The Creature is also thoroughly textual, and he longs for a new language in terms of which he can more truly live.
