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Reviews
"The
word [deaccessioned] you've entered does not appear in the
dictionary," my search engine informs me, although it does
let me know
that "accession" involves increase, acquisition. To
which Jonathan
Brannen, in this book of linked meditations, responds, "Minus
is more
exact / than plus." Or, "there are no / empty words,"
which fact he
proves over and again in his explorations of distance, passage,
and
death's imprint on identity. By writing his poems along two tracks,
one that gathers thinking together, and another that disperses
it,
Brannen illustrates the tenuousness of language even as he shows
faith
in the act of speech. I have not for some time read such a profound
consideration of "what passes," or how best to talk
about the mind's
landscapes once they're gone.
--Susan M. Schultz
The visceral and the intellectual, the fragmentary
and the full, the
future and memory - Jonathan Brannen interrogates opposites in
these
facing pairs, brilliantly illuminating the zone of language that
operates between. Sharp and bright, it's a collection that sees
the
world in all its detail and in vivid color; it sparks the mind.
-- Cole Swensen
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