Sarah Lindsay's poems have been hailed as dark-edged ... with a buoying
sense of respect-for the different, the unexpected and the challenging.
(Publishers Weekly) Lindsay's new collection, Mount Clutter, is the
product of an immensely original and exhilarating poetic sensibility,
ranging wide across a highly distinctive imaginary landscape. In a voice
that is distinctly her own, Lindsay probes the uncharted territories of
history's curious little corners, reanimating obscure accounts of
strange discoveries and bizarre scientific findings. A stunning sequence
on the discovery of the Bufo Islands imagines what it means to encounter
something as yet unnamed, unknown to human history, but bursting with
possibilities. Lindsay similarly breathes new life into literary
classics and ancient Greek myths, taking, for example, the well-known
motif of Orpheus's descent into the underworld and transforming it into
a hauntingly resonant portrait of the vicissitudes of loss. Lindsay's
poems exude an extraordinary ability of fusing the outlandish and the
little-known historical minutiae with the unmistakably familiar markers
of the human experience. Mount Clutter is a remarkably sustained and
self-assured performance -- stirring new poetry from the acclaimed 1997
national Book Award finalist. [A] vision that beckons the reader after
it into unexpected recognitions. -- W. S. Merwin
