Letters & Buildings

Hummel's debut collection, winner of the 2013 Subito Poetry Prize, reveals the poet's architectural precision as he explores various ways of seeing the self and others. The poems feel like complex schematics of a philosophical mind, particularly in the speaker's use of graphical perspective to navigate the way he perceives his father. Experimental forms, such as empty brackets and blank spaces between words (representing missing text) as well as floating punctuation, challenge the reader to circle the meanings of "father" along with the speaker. The centerpiece of the book, "Point and Line to Plane," a nearly 20-page work of collage created with the use a random integer generator, sees Hummel utilize an unusual process to deal with difficult concepts, including the idea of "conscious visualization," but too often the substance gets lost in the method. Yet Hummel's writing has much to offer, particularly in the way of insightful observation: "The nature of a building, even if it/ fails, is to remind us of our fragility." Thoroughly inquisitive and diligently assembled, Hummel's debut asks the reader to navigate the most complex constructions of the mind. (Dec.)