The poems in Laurie Kutchins' new collection sustain the lyric and imagistic sensibility of her last book, The Night Path, but depart significantly from it in narrative, structure, voice, and topic. The poems in Slope of the Child Everlasting grew out of extended scrutiny of master poets--Matsuo Basho, Elizabeth Bishop, Garcia Lorca, Rainer Maria Rilke, Li Po, and others--as Kutchins searched for forms and voices to express post-September 11 rupture. The book's central images and voices are archetypes--who "do their work" largely from the soundings of the unconscious. Kutchins employs forms, including haiku, renga, sestina, and ghazal, to present a wide range of characters drawn from memory and her imagination.The mountains, the great divide, the river, the owl and the blind man all visit the Underworld. From their journey to this fertile mythic darkness, these characters claim their futures through visions of the past--the urge of the bloodroot.
© BOA Editions, Ltd. 2007