Publisher's Synopsis
Away from rising waters and into the stacks, Sound/Chest wades into forgotten technologies and sometimes dwelled-upon flashes of memory. The card catalog, once filled with the information necessary to understand the library's workings more directly, is now empty and waiting to be discarded like thoughts that only roll to the front of our minds when something ephemeral reminds us of them again, prolonging their existence. The bell of the filmstrip player, now itself a relic in our forward progress, rings and signals its operator to move the narrative forward, one frame at a time. The language of filmstrip projection, existing now only in the memories of those who sat through countless numbers of them in grade school, weaves its way throughout the book, infiltrating the conversational, though often "jittery," tone of the poems. Where these two ephemeral items, once hallmarks of our search for information, combine is in the mind. Free of these tangible data stores, one wanders through, reminded of the people, places, and concepts which seemed short-lived upon their creation but continue to exist, if only in memories which were displaced but reemerge as the flood waters continue to work their way in. Nothing is ever far from the surface: relationships, politics, memories of car crashes, or even the vacations of others. The information collected by the mind, when not required to do so, is staggering when that information reengages us, asks us to be present in that memory while removing us from our present. "These poems keep babbling," writes Johannes Göransson, "until they've told us just about everything we did and did not want to know about ourselves." This is not to say that the poems of Sound/Chest having anything to confess but instead are a regurgitation in a moment of crisis, a materialization of buried, though never erased, memories. What the waters bring up with them from the bottom of the lake or river or ocean, the mind excavates from its depths and places before the reader. Whatever was vast and unknowable begins to map itself in these poems. Memories persist just as the oncoming catastrophe persists, soon to overtake all efforts to prepare for it. Memories, however, cannot be prepared for: where they emerge from cannot be sandbagged against, no levy can be built, and there is no higher ground to clamber. As the memories rush in, the wandering continues, from stack to stack and through each drawer, hoping to understand but avoid the inevitable destruction of materials and, ultimately, of memories collected throughout a lifetime experiences. These experiences are not the poignant moments of a life lived but rather the ephemera, the moments taken for granted that never required drawer space in the mind. The words are "made 'surplus'" in Sound/Chest, signaling language which is at times absurd, at other times "sublime," to use Göransson's words. The flood is indeed a destitute time and only direction to look for salvation seems inward, hoping to find refuge in the mind and in the physical space of the library. Though the drawers may be empty, the card catalog's labels are intact, but there is no inherent or immediately identifiable relationship between the words and numbers on these drawers. This book hopes to create that relationship, to find the connection between these words - or maybe all words - and thus between the memories which emerge from the recesses of the mind and "the barely off-stage catastrophe," as Rae Armantrout refers to it, in the present. Ultimately, Sound/Chest is about holding on in a moment where everything is about to be swept out from underneath.
