Corridor: Miniature Edition (Wesleyan New Poets)

By: Jonathan Aaron

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Synopsis: Poetry that springs from the collision of memory, dream, and history, Jonathan Aaron's narratives and lyrics develop in unpredictable, often unlikely ways toward moments of surprising disclosure. The poems in Corridor look back on actual or fictional events in history (the fate of a foolhardy Roman commander, the musings of a fourth-century farmer who saw the Huns), celebrate modern adventures of the imagination such as filmmaker Luis Bunuel and novelist/fabulist Julio Cortazar, explore moments of a private vision (a man recalls his addiction to cigarettes, a woman tries to communicate with a water monster), recast the narrative spells of a ballad - "Serial Nocturne," the collection's longest work, revisits and renews the age-old story of the demon lover. Different as they are, these poems are driven by an underlying impulse to portray characters as odds with the worlds they inhabit, people who are therefore all the more of those worlds, individuals whose dilemmas and crises all have something to tell us about the struggle of moral consciousness to discover itself.