Swamp Isthmus

Book excerpt: Poetry. SWAMP ISTHMUS takes the stripped, lyric voice of SELENOGRAPHY, the first book of Wilkinson's No Volta pentalogy, and confronts a pre-apocalyptic vision of American urban life. Here, the city and forest are one, as are the river and sewer. The ghost and the body are one, and the buildings and the trees, the sidewalks and the switchbacks all fuse. The poems in SWAMP ISTHMUS create the flipside of the pastoral the urban returns to the rural, their fates inseparable. In this broken, scattered world that still finds a way to be playful and imploring, there is no respite in the trees and streams and no turning back on nostalgia for either nature or the city. Though the second installment of the larger pentalogy, SWAMP ISTHMUS stands alone, archiving and organizing, rehearsing words to hold in the mouth for just that moment. "I can't remember the last time a book of poems gave me such a bewildered, deep pleasure. It's as if Joshua Marie Wilkinson made himself translucent so that these perfect, mysterious arrangements of world and word could shimmer through. I waited on every word, every line break, consistently taken by surprise, totally convinced and awed." Maggie Nelson "Joshua Marie Wilkinson can gently, kindly whirl with no regrets as his language, like a soft machine, enriches us. Freedom and light. And how many experiences It just walks, producing what it wishes, imprinting these magic worlds into us. An inheritance for ever." Toma alamun "SWAMP ISTHMUS puts into the eye everything you've ever imagined wanting but didn't know how to see. Star image, 'a lake of bees' over the eye-mind, what feeling is is what happens here. These poems know our questions before we know them, the things of our questions, and how we long into them some deep yearning and also some re-recognition. I have a strong instinct to lick these pages." Dawn Lundy Martin "Joshua Marie Wilkinson writes a vivid and exuberant poetry. The authentic and surprising associations of SWAMP ISTHMUS construct signposts to lucid and informing mysteries. These poems possess an inviting ease with numerous melodies. SWAMP ISTHMUS is a dazzling collection." Michael Burkard"