The Cartographer's Vacation

Whether mapping the cartographer's obsessive-compulsive disorder, or an anthropomorphized noodle, or love's disconnections, Andrea Cohen's witty, elegant poems and their subjects go way out on a limb. Hers is a deceptively breezy voice that doesn't let the reader escape the dark knowledge of human contingencies. The Cartographer's Vacation has much to tell us about our language's animated flow, its tow and undertow. By joining the pleasures of her cool, intellectual surfaces to a tone of emotional urgency, Cohen creates a surprising, particular, inimitable art. In line after shapely linenot to mention a pair of prose poems that give a good name back to that much-abused formCohen evinces an imagination 'strangely prepared for everything.' That's how one of her speakers describes herself; that's the way to describe this remarkable first book.