Selenography
Poetry by Joshua Marie Wilkinson
With Polaroids by Tim Rutilli
“an owl breaks the
fold a cut tree spills
a soft crutch
hits
this dust
a freezer stocked
with I
happened
to myself in these very woods.”
Joshua Marie Wilkinson's Selenography finds words in want of their own life to chart an adumbrated landscape, “a good song played // too patchily / to keep / in your lungs.” Side by side with full-color Polaroids by Califone's Tim Rutili, these poems traverse thought and image, object and vestige, contingency and intention, likening the haunted drift through this sounding of words to a river, “easy incomplete but it / took us / like twigs.”
“In [Wilkinson’s] latest we are charting out the surface of Wilkinson’s thought, with all the attendant mystery and depth that the moon mythically implies. Just as the Renaissance writers found a nomenclature to attach to the rifts and ranges of the moon, the poet finds a common thread in words, however tenuous, connecting the peaks and craters of his thought.” —Sean Patrick Hill, Bookslut
“Wilkinson’s book is also proof that it is possible to create beautiful and affecting art in the attempt to record our fleeting world, even if that art is not indelible and can be as fragile as a Polaroid photograph, even if it doesn’t make the world indelible. Selenography is an example of such art: a perfect marriage between the visual and the written word.” mdash;Kristin Abraham, New Pages
“Wolf Dust” from Selenography selected for inclusion in Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology.
Selenography reviewed by Word For/Word, the Examiner, rob mclennan, Best American, and Pank.
Joshua Marie Wilkinson interviewed by BOMB: Part I and Part II, and by Mike Young for Studio One Reading Series.
The Daily Iowan profile of Joshua Marie Wilkinson & Selenography
Cover Polaroid by Tim Rutilli
Born and raised in Seattle, Joshua Marie Wilkinson is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Selenography. He has also edited two anthologies for University of Iowa Press, including Poets on Teaching, due out fall 2010. A tour documentary about the band Califone, entitled Made a Machine by Describing the Landscape, is also forthcoming. He teaches at Loyola University Chicago, and divides his time between Chicago and Athens, GA.
Tim Rutili is a musician, filmmaker, and visual artist. He is principal songwriter, lyricist, and vocalist for Red Red Meat and Califone, bands which he founded. He is also a member of Ugly Casanova and Boxhead Ensemble. Rutili has composed music for documentary and feature films and contributed to albums by Modest Mouse, Sage Francis, and many other artists. He has directed numerous short films and music videos. His feature-film directorial debut All My Friends Are Funeral Singers had its premier at the 2010 Sundance film festival. He lives in Los Angeles and Chicago.
Sample Pages
