Archeophonics (Wesleyan Poetry Series)

Peter Gizzi relies on a very ambitious, risky poetic archipelago: he reaches back in the endless chamber of lost sounds, "past lives", past "me's" to gain a foot between the past and the future. His psychic domain is overgrown with the repast of morphing consonants and vowels, and his trust in the reader is immense: he expects that they might know a few words not offered in 99 percent of the poetry written today. Even some words that have scientific underpinnings.This, to my mind at least, is Gizzi's best collection to date, surpassing even "Threshold Songs". It has a voluble adventurousness that stitches the whole of his poetic quest together, and by joining antinomies (past, future) he actually breaks them. Recommended.