Toward a catalogue of falling

Shortlisted for the 1997 Pat Lowther Award and for the 1997 McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award Toward a Catalogue of Falling, Meira Cook's second full-length book, proves that the fall into language can be both graceful and startling. Whether she is rewriting Hans Christian Anderson's "The Little Mermaid" (as she does in her poem sequence "Days of Water"), thinking of Breughel's/Williams'/ Auden's Icarus, reading oranges, or offering advice for catching crows, Cook's words are luminous. Language is a character in these poems, along with circus performers, Venetian tour guides, clumsy sons and migrating geese. Cook writes poems that bless hearts turned to salt, and revive the silenced energies of words. Always unexpected, always elegant, this is language that endures.