The Swing at the Edge of the World

<p class=ql-align-justify><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Is travel within or outside of us? </em></p><p class=ql-align-justify></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>-Why Don't We All Stay Home</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>In this chapbook of travel poems the heft and range of perspective is explored. What do we see and experience when in unfamiliar places? How are those sights and experiences determined by the familiar or the angle of the self? How does our knowledge or lack thereof determine how we piece together a place? How does travel then change our familiar places? If we spend time in the fourteenth arrondissement of Paris France does that change our vision of Paris Arkansas? Paris Texas? Like the photo of Lantau Peak by the photographer Yoav Horesh in which his subject is shooting photos from the second highest place in Hong Kong perspective shapes the view.</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>In some of these poems like When You're in Romania and Wish You Were Alone a single person (the rock and roll loser) undermines the speaker-traveler's hopes for a peaceful thoughtful experience. In others like </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>It's As If the Whole World Has Forgotten Us</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> the Guatemalan woman who speaks the title's line opens up a whole world for our narrator-a world of both near-total isolation on the border of Mexico/Guatemala and one of gratitude. In this book the ethics and limitations of travel are implicitly questioned-and how places leave us craving leave us dreaming.</span></p><p></p>