A Daily Glance
Nathalie Stephens' Paper City is rolling around in my head, as Poulet might say. I've had the book on my poetry shelves for several years, though I have just read it fully. I read individual pieces over time, but the book works best as a whole, though I'm not sure how to conceive of the project yet. The subtitle is "a caprice on the subject of disillusionment," and it's easy to spot disillusionment in the poems as many of them seem critical of our times. Through the book, we are introduced to characters named "n," "b," and "?." I'm not sure how to read these characters, but they seem to be in some relationship. Are the letters standing in for people? Are we engaged in some language game? Are the letters the smallest expressible units of a person? Are the letters there to show us a lack of communication? I'm not sure, yet it seems to me that an interpretation of the book depends on understanding them.
Nathalie Stephens' Paper City is rolling around in my head, as Poulet might say. I've had the book on my poetry shelves for several years, though I have just read it fully. I read individual pieces over time, but the book works best as a whole, though I'm not sure how to conceive of the project yet. The subtitle is "a caprice on the subject of disillusionment," and it's easy to spot disillusionment in the poems as many of them seem critical of our times. Through the book, we are introduced to characters named "n," "b," and "?." I'm not sure how to read these characters, but they seem to be in some relationship. Are the letters standing in for people? Are we engaged in some language game? Are the letters the smallest expressible units of a person? Are the letters there to show us a lack of communication? I'm not sure, yet it seems to me that an interpretation of the book depends on understanding them.
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