The Book of Landings brings together the second and third parts of Mark McMorris's visionary trilogy "Auditions for Utopia,"-initiated in Entrepot-and marks two stages in the evolution of the poet's conception of space. The first stage of the collection is the entrepot, a space where disparate vectors of identity congregate, come into conflict, and finally merge into hybrid forms. The poetry follows a trajectory of diaspora, or exile, instigated by conquest, colonialism, wars, and political defeat in the search for Utopia. In The Book of Landings the promised dwelling has been removed from the realm of physical geography, and there is only transition-fragmentary episodes of arrival and departure, in transit from one entrepot to another. These episodes of transit do not only compose a linear sequence only. Instead, they define a space or surface marked by repeated traversals over time-tracings and, importantly, re-tracings, by explorers, conquerors, migrants, merchants, slaves, refugees, and exiles-a city of palimpsests. An online reader's companion will be available at markmcmorris.site.wesleyan.edu.
- ISBN10 0819576344
- ISBN13 9780819576347
- Publish Date 15 March 2016
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Publisher University Press of New England
- Imprint Wesleyan University Press
- Format eBook
- Pages 228
- Language English