The Book of Landings

The Book of Landings brings together the second and third parts of Mark McMorriss visionary trilogy Auditions for Utopia,initiated in Entreptand marks two stages in the evolution of the poets conception of space. The first stage of the collection is the entrept, a space where disparate vectors of identity congregate, come into conflict, and finally merge into hybrid forms. The poetry follows a trajectory of diaspora, or exile, instigated by conquest, colonialism, wars, and political defeat in the search for Utopia. In The Book of Landings the promised dwelling has been removed from the realm of physical geography, and there is only transitionfragmentary episodes of arrival and departure, in transit from one entrept to another. These episodes of transit do not only compose a linear sequence only. Instead, they define a space or surface marked by repeated traversals over timetracings and, importantly, re-tracings, by explorers, conquerors, migrants, merchants, slaves, refugees, and exilesa city of palimpsests. An online readers companion will be available at markmcmorris.site.wesleyan.edu.