Or to Begin Again

Ann Lauterbach’s ninth work of poetry, Or to Begin Again, takes its name from a sixteen-poem elegy that resists its own end, as it meditates on the nearness of specific attachment and loss against the mute background of historical forces in times of war. In the center of the book is a twelve-part narrative, Alice in the Wasteland, inspired by Lewis Carroll’s great character and T.S. Eliot’s 1922 modernist poem. Alice is accosted by an invisible Voice as she wanders and wonders about the nature of language in relation to perception. In this volume, Lauterbach again shows the range of her formal inventiveness, demonstrating the visual dynamics of the page in tandem with the powerful musical cadences and imagery of a contemporary master.