A Field Guide to the Spirits: Volume 47 (Conversation Pieces) - Softcover

LeBlanc, Jean

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1619760975 ISBN 13: 9781619760974

Publisher: Aqueduct Press, 2015

Synopsis

In A Field Guide to the Spirits, poetry becomes a means of time travel in which voices from the past offer insights, reveal secrets, transform our concept of now. These poems explore the interwoven pathways of ghost, memory, imagination, and desire.

Review

”A Field Guide to the Spirits might conjure up visions of an abecedarium of different supernatural beings, each with their own way of interacting with the world. What we get is instead something considerably more nuanced and interesting. The focus of this collection is historical, looking back at the spiritualism movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and to historical figures spanning many centuries. At no point does it commit to the reality of the spirits being channeled in the poetry, which evidences an interesting tension between the obviously rationalistic tenor of our society that frames the collection and the perhaps pre-rational mindset of the spiritualists and their clients, especially at the height of their popularity. So here we get Kate Fox and automatic writing, but at the same time we get a series of three poems about astronomer Caroline Herschel.”

Karen Burnham, Strange Horizons

Edition details

• Publisher: Aqueduct Press
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1619760975
• ISBN 13: 9781619760974
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 102