Laws of Rest invents a new form, the English prose sonnet is an intricate chamber of text enclosed within four quatrains of right-justified prose. In their box-like aesthetics, the poems conjure the weird, meticulous worlds of Joseph Cornell or Edmund Spenser. But anything can happen in these little rooms, in which the overheard conversation of taxi drivers, invented verses of Virgil, found text about Middle-Eastern geopolitics, and the music of extinct butterflies merge into unpredictable collage. Presiding over all is the gender-bending character Lucy, the subject of a failed love affair conducted in convenience stores and equestrian centres. The book ends with a series of poems a friend who died young, bringing to elegaic focus the poems' quest to understand the laws of rest (a phrase taken from the Jewish laws of Sabbath observance): the stillness of loss, the mute repose at the end of speaking.
- ISBN10 1927040868
- ISBN13 9781927040867
- Publish Date 1 October 2013
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country CA
- Imprint Book*hug
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 84
- Language English