Nox

“Essentially, it’s a box. Inside the box is a connected, folded concertina of pages. On one side of the page—the verso—she often gives a dictionary definition for the 63 words of Catullus’s poem, which is supposedly an elegy for his brother. So, it’s like a dictionary gloss, but it’s an imitation, to an extent, because she keeps on giving definitions that include the idea of ‘nox’, of night. On the other side of the page, we get an account—appropriately enough, for a meditation on Catullus’s poem—of her own brother’s death. She pieces together fragments of his life. The reader has to piece together the fragmented narrative, and some of the pages are formatted like photocopied, torn pages—the scattered leaves of a life. It’s like a memorial album, written in prose.” Read more...

The Best Recent Poetry to Read

Jamie McKendrick, Literary Scholar