Attempting to repair the fissures of everyday life, Brian Brodeur
negotiates the psychological distances between desire and disgust, humor
and catastrophe, banality and dream. The poems of Other Latitudes begin
in the realm of personal experience, and expand into larger territories
of cultural narcissism and political blindness. These poems meditate on
the tenuous relationship between artist and subject, the curiosities of
self-inflicted wounds, and the presence of hope in a landscape that is
intrinsically scarred. Brodeur's debut illustrates the conflict between
inner lives and their outward appearances, with an eye turned to the
unforgiving natural world.