Dark Archive

New California Poetry

by Laura Mullen

Dark archive: The purpose of a dark archive is to function as a repository for information that can be used as a failsafe during disaster recovery. Laura Mullen's fourth collection is a sequence of beautifully interrelated poems that explores how to accurately represent the reality of change and loss. Mullen pinpoints what is at stake: the possibility of communication and connection-and the hope of intimacy. Invoking Wordsworth's "I wandered lonely as a cloud," she pushes experiments in consciousness against their boundaries in an array of poetic forms. Poetic tropes are measured against natural phenomena as Mullen examines what "witness" might mean in the context of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the failures of capitalism to effect social justice, the murder of James Byrd in Texas, the personal loss of a mother figure, and a disintegrating love affair.

Genres: Poetry

152 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Laura Mullen is the author of nine books: EtC (Solid Objects 2023), Complicated Grief, Enduring Freedom: A Little Book of Mechanical Brides, The Surface, After I Was Dead, Subject and Dark Archive, The Tales of Horror, and Murmur. Recognitions for her poetry include Ironwood’s Stanford Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Rona Jaffe Award, among other honors. Her work has been widely anthologized and is included in American Hybrid (Norton), and I'll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women (Les Figues). She is the Kenan Chair in the Humanities at Wake Forest University.

Reviews

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

re-reading . . .

[Dana Jerman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Laura is a decent poet. Experimental, some of which work. Most of it left me feeling meh. Too esoteric, too messy.