Carlo Rovelli, Italian physicist, says that "the world is not a collection of things, it is a collection of events." Poet Diane Louie thinks of prose poems as little events. They are happening and happenings. They draw on experience, image, metaphor, and all the properties of language to create little worlds-in-motion: spinning while orbiting, actively shifting our point of view.

More genus than hybrid species, prose poems can straddle the obvious limits and less-obvious liberties of perception. This active characteristic of spanning and connecting is especially relevant in a time of cultural polarization. Marrying, even uneasily, the inquiries of science and spiritual longing can illuminate what they--and we--have in common: a desire to understand our presence in a universe that does not yield ultimate answers.

Author: Diane Louie
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 10/15/2020
Series: National Poetry
Pages: 88
Weight: 0.2lbs
Size: 8.40h x 7.70w x 0.20d
ISBN: 9780820357904


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 09/01/2020 pg. 70

About the Author
DIANE LOUIE was born in Newfoundland and grew up in Connecticut. She earned degrees from Oberlin College and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop for both fiction and poetry. Her work has appeared in Epoch, Arts & Letters, FIELD, TriQuarterly, Cloudbank and elsewhere. She lives in Paris, France, with her partner, a research scientist.