The medieval Mappa Mundi showed the real world hedged about with
wonders. Philip Gross's new poems are as vividly observed and sometimes
fabulous as the traveler's tales of antiquity. Like those creatures in
the margins of old maps they are hybrids of real longings, truth and
lies. Each is a journey, open-ended and surprising, giving glimpses of
the Middle East, the Pacific North-West, or a Europe of lost spas. These
poems explore the spaces that can open between buildings in a city
street, in the shifting lights of love aging, or in the gaps between
words. Heady and sobering, unsettling, celebratory, they come home with
findings from the real world of the senses, heart, and mind.
A Poetry Book Society Recommendation.