![]() ![]() Her text and image collages are unique in capturing what is missing from standard maps. In each page of her second collection, Cowles calls us to pause and notice with her. Urgent, yet knowing from the beginning the joy and impossibility of the task of writing the ordinary world, the sun rising again every morning. In the opening poem of the collection, “Origin Story,” we arrive in Greece with the “I” of the poem and we feel the call to write, the call to capture the world as it is, We move through a series of different landscapes with her particular, detailed eye. In four sections, “Island,” “Tide,” “Plain,” and “Port,” Cowles does the work of mapmaking and map dissecting. This is the right book to read when we are asking the questions of, “How did we get here?” A book that is a reminder of Audre Lorde’s famous proclamation, “Poetry is not a luxury.” Cowles’ work is a testament to poetry as survival, as a way forward. But this poetry speaks to our now and speaks to our future. Before we made each of our decisions, and marked so many of our moments, in light of an international pandemic. Many of us will not know for months if we have ever had the disease that is holding our collective attention. As you read this, you could be infected with Covid-19 and not know it. At a time when many of us are yearning for clear directions from a reputable source, when a simple how to get from here to there feels impossible, when the world seems anything but ordinary, Kathryn Cowles’ Maps and Transcripts of the Ordinary World is a reminder to see the world around us, a beautiful return to noticing, an invitation to circle and remember.Īs I write this, I could be infected with Covid-19 and not know it. Kathryn Cowles begins her poetry collection with an epigraph from John Berger, “The waters change all the while and stay the same only on the map.” She brings the reader to the earth, to a place of questioning what we know, and to questioning the role of maps, the limits of their knowledge, and their role in our lives. Maps and Transcripts of the Ordinary World
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