A Precise Chaos

<p>A life-long commitment to social evolution - and occasionally revolution - animates the poems in Jo-Ann Mort's debut collection <em>A Precise Chaos</em>. Moving from Mostar to Oaxaca Paris to Taormina Mort's peripatetic poems reflect her experiences as a trade union activist a political organizer and a peace activist in the Middle East. Refusing to evade the hard questions called for by a life honestly examined she asks: We who are so righteous./Where does it lead us? By publishing her first collection in her sixties Mort succeeds in distilling a wealth of experience into something like wisdom: The men were larger than life/starting revolutions in their heads and in their classrooms...//The men were larger than life/so life eluded them.</p>