Daily Glance

Caroline Bergvall's Drift is one of the best poetry books I have seen in years.  You should, right this moment, drop anything you are doing and get a copy.  It's that good.  Really, I would tell you to get it just for the print job of it, but beyond that, it's great.  If you know Bergvall's work, it contains a familiar mixing of Old English with Modern English.  Beyond that, it contains drawings, pages of what appear to be constellations, and interesting textual play.

The book begins with a series of these lines drawings, which is interesting because the next section contains poems that are in roughly similar shapes but that introduce us to the seafarer theme (and yes, The Seafarer).  The book is a journey of the speaker north, of migrants north to Europe, of an individual into a language past, of an individual into a family heritage.  These journeys play out through various poems all through the book. 

 

There are pages of thorns, which are also in the shape of poems.  This plays in well to the book because we see an active process of language research happening (with, for example, the OED showing up frequently).  There are pages of rough images.  There are pages of what seem like constellations (the paper is black).  This collection is both political and person, and it is far too complicated for a brief Daily Glance. (In fact, I could see some grad student starting a dissertation on this one!)