A Duration

In the poem-essays that comprise A Duration, writing is a physical act where writing and lived experience support one another in bodiesanimal, plant, mineral, and word bodiesthat are injured and heal, that die and continue in new forms, playing new roles. Here, in his fifth book, Richard Meier transmutes years of daily practices of attentionbe it to a line spoken by Lears Fool, a train to Kingston, or red inside green stem below eight white petals in a spiral with space between them attached to the yellow centerinto mesmerizing trajectories through an always unfolding present. In the collapse of the border between writing and the body, A Duration, play[s] both hearts with a heartbeat and kinship of place, time, mundanity in the continuous onrushing imagined joy.