Publisher's Synopsis
Poetry. Fiction. Drama. Literary Nonfiction. California Interest. Laura Vena's X/SHE: STARDRAPED consists of a series of overlapping journeys--spiritual, cultural, linguistic, cartographic, geographical, psychic--mapping onto what was and has become the landscapes we know as Los Angeles and Southern California. Her long poem calls upon the ancestors, upon myth, upon the natural world itself, as its lyric speakers convey the depth and richness of their exploration and the immensities of the worlds they move through, stating towards the collection's end that 'I have learned the language of the winds and to hear what's whispered below / Learned the light offered me / To this vastness I submit.' Vena's poetry in X/SHE: STARDRAPED represents an impressive new contribution to the ever-expanding body of contemporary American poetry and ecopoetics.--John Keene
