Gabriel Meyer

A Map of Shadows Gabriel Meyer

Poetry. A MAP OF SHADOWS is an ambitious, enthusiastic sequence of lyrics and meditations that is unique yet has affinities with works as distinguished--and as 'difficult, ' because of far-flung sources and innovative arrangements--as Ezra Pound's Cantos and David Jones's Anathemata. Its polymath author is devoted to the visual arts, and one might think of his own product as a kind of Kuntskammer of historical anecdotes and contemporary aperçus, arcane quotations and esoteric lists (18th century Chinese painters' brushstrokes, magical herbs, sacred stones), recipes and white spells and inkhorn terms, ingenious machinery devised by such out-of-the-way designers as Giacomo Torelli and Salomon de Caus.... Everywhere informed by a sensibility strongly inclined to synaestheia, this volume speaks to the collector of curiosities and the connoisseurs of chaos latent in the postmodern soul.--Stephen Yenser