Synaptic

Alison Calder

• Publisher: University of Regina Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9780889778634
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Poesía canadiense

An award-winning poet attempts to map the brain’s neural connections, raising fundamental questions about identity and interiority. This intricate, yearning work from award-winning poet Alison Calder asks us to think about the way we perceive and the ways in which we seek to know ourselves and others.
 
In Synaptic,  each section explores key themes in science, neurology, and perception. The first, Connectomics, riffs on scientific language to work with and against that language’s intentions. Attempting to map the brain’s neural connections, it raises fundamental questions about interiority and the self. The lyric considerations in these poems are juxtaposed against the scientific-like footnotes which, in turn, invoke questions undermining authority and power. The second section, Other Disasters, explores ways of seeing or and being seen, from considerations of folklore to modern art to daily life. 
 
The speakers in these poems are searching for knowledge. Everyone is looking for a miracle.
 

Connectomics

4

CLARITY2

Firefly mouse flickers, forgets

lessons, forgets

want. Inside his skull

the past incinerates, embers

blizzarding into ash.

The screened brain’s a maze,

sizzling, fragments

of a film that’s not replayed.

What and how and why flash briefly,

die. Mouse mind flares.

It turns to glass.

2 CLARITY is the name of the process by which the brain is m...