The Breathing Body of This Thought

In this provocative debut, translator Turovskaya explores questions of truth, knowledge, and epistemology. Structured as a book-length sequence in four parts, she places lyric fragments, prose poetry, and hybrid forms in conversation. “We made it out of the fog/ a figure,” she writes, “swimming to shore with a bag/ of winter oranges.” She proposes that knowledge is a momentary consensus: “The world is not a noun, not known, or known once.” Midway through the sequence, poems take the form of an insistent Socratic questioning infused with a wildly associative dream logic: “Is this a marriage, a chronicle, a walk against the wind, a tender conversation made private by the white noise of the surf, the whorl of screaming gulls?” As Turovskaya moves between fragmented texts and seemingly self-contained ones, knowledge is made and unmade, reminding the reader of its inherent instability. Indeed, Turovskaya’s strength lies in her ability to create a narrative arc through form as well as content, her innovative style revealing new approaches to the philosophical tradition. (Nov.)