These evocative poems move from the icon of Alice in Wonderland to the
imagined figure of Alice out of Wonderland--on a Vancouver beach with
the poet, underground with Persephone, in Memphis with Elvis. But first
they explore the life of the real Alice Liddell (1852-1934), who sat
still for Charles Dodgson's camera and inspired the Alice books that
prompted his rise to fame as Lewis Carroll. In this powerful sequence,
the emotional life of Alice Liddell as girl and woman is depicted in
brilliant narrative juxtapositions. Presented is Alice the creation and
Alice the person in a cultural context that, on one level, reexamines
cognition and dissociation and on another, liberates the poetic sequence
from the monotony of story and closure.