cover image Maps and Transcripts of the Ordinary World

Maps and Transcripts of the Ordinary World

Kathryn Cowles. Milkweed, $16 trade paper (96p) ISBN 978-1-57131-502-1

A book-length sequence of linked poems, collages, and hybrid texts, the innovative latest from Cowles (Eleanor, Eleanor, not your real name) uses text and image to explore the strangeness inherent in everyday experience. Cowles’s collages do not serve as mere illustrations, but rather complicate, call into question, and layer interpretations onto the poems proper. Her approach to defamiliarizing mundane tasks (“Every morning we open the curtains./ Every evening we sit on the porch”) is multifaceted and intriguing. As the book unfolds, her stylistic gestures juxtaposed alongside collages combining photography and text evoke the strangeness in that “same view of the terraces” and “the sky in the late afternoon.” However, the writer occasionally loses sight of deeper meaning in her weaving of the two forms. In “I AM ON A PLANE,” Cowles writes: “Have I been/ on a plane/ the greater part/ of the day?/ I believe I have.” Here, Cowles strives for a refreshing simplicity of presentation, but ultimately fails to do justice to the complexity of her thinking. Readers will nonetheless find Cowles’s latest book an intriguing approach to exploring representation and narrative. (Mar.)