Ventriloquy

Poetry. VENTRILOQUY brings together four poem sequences that throw the author's voice in different directions. "Garden of Tongues, Garden of Eyes" sings, in formally similar poems, of many flowers through imagined myth and stories. The poems in "Divination," also formally similar, consider whether it's possible to divine characters through action. A third sequence of formally loose poems treats human desire, foible, and obsession through imagined saints—the saint of big data, the oil saint, the citizen saint, the sorry saint, and others. A final sequence of short prose poems depicts still life paintings and how they point away from the stilled objects on display out to a beautiful and imperfect world. Sometimes lyrical, sometimes surreal, VENTRILOQUY explores human longing for control, wonder, and meaning.