Description

Tupelo Press, paperback

Publication Date: August 1, 2022

Publisher Marketing:

Winner of the Snowbound Chapbook Award

I am stunned, delighted, and moved by the seamless merging of meaning and music that unfolds throughout The Future Perfect: A Fugue. Whether made up of one sentence or a dozen, each section of this long, single work stands on its own, as self-sufficient as a painting in a museum, while contributing to the whole masterful gathering. This is an intricate work of decisive oscillation, of tender and careful attention shifting swiftly and precisely between the infinitesimal and the vast, and between one concrete reality and another, without ever losing its way: The house rages, but is not consumed. Ablaze, it stands as square and certain as a childs drawing. In each window: flames instead of curtains. Such sure-footed writing is astonishing. It would be an understatement to point out that the reader rarely encounters such piercing visionary states, with the author highly alert to sound and syllable, while focused on meaning: Is it disillusion or dissolution that one experiences first? Throughout, the author probes our capacity for perception: what do we see (the present), remember (the past), and imagine (the future)? And how do we understand them? What elevates the writing even more is the unmistakable passion and urgency pulsing throughout each of the poems sections, the deliberate and inspired choice of every word. from the Snowbound Award Citation by John Yau