The Weekly Meta-Reader

Once again I am reviewing a book from Tarpaulin Sky. I received Figures for a Darkroom Voice earlier this week in the mail. As I opened the book I realized that it is a jeremiad composed in verse. Noah Eli Gordon and Joshua Marie Wilkinson set out to explain two lines of verse:

When the last mirage
evaporates, I will be
the sole proprietor of this voice
and all its rusted machinery.

-- John Yau

We are leavened in the atmosphere. Figures for a darkroom voice.
Bodies sketched in silt.

--Eric Baus

Yet instead of answering these two verses with straight forward remarks, Gordon and Wilkinson answer with their own riddles of imagery and verse. The images they create are perplexingly beautiful. In the end I would have to say this is a book for people who read poetry. It takes a vivid imagination to construct Figures for a Darkroom Voice into something wonderful (so basically if you are reading this blog you should go pick up a copy.)

You can also view a youtube clip of Joshua Marie Wilkinson and Noah Eli Gordon reading excerpts curtsy of The Continental Review.