Have a talk with a ghost or a duck or contest the destroyers of the land, listen to the roos and slow worms, marvel and question and rage and love the language with John Kinsella’s Aporia. Aporia is a collectionsearching for logic where logic is hard to find or maybe can't be found. Fromthe death of the poet's father, to considering the complex, troubled, and oftendistressing relationship between humans and non-human life, and through a senseof ghosts being materially present even when we doubt their existence, weundertake a journey in which reality and creative conception are in tension. This tension is embodied in the figure of the poet Hölderlin, and also throughmoments in Ovid's Metamorphosis, ongoing obsessions for Kinsella whichhe constantly circles back to, reconsiders, and departs from. Whetherconversing with ghosts or the living, with animals or plants, these are poemsconcerned with transformative relationships with and within the “natural world.”Kangaroos, echidnas, ducks, owls, deer, slow worms, and many other creaturesfrom around the world inhabit these pages, finding their own way through toautonomy and self-declaration as the poet argues with himself over the dynamicsof life and death.
