Maps and transcripts of the ordinary world Poems

It's hardly surprising that a collection whose title references "maps and transcripts" addresses our desire to nail down experience, but the award-winning Cowles (Eleanor, Eleanor) deftly shows that as we struggle to transform into language what we see and hear and feel, the results are inevitably incomplete; there's a gap between what we want to say and what we actually manage. Of course, she faces the same problem, and sometimes the poems feel unsatisfactory--which is exactly the point. Life doesn't happen as neatly as art can make us believe, and Cowles can be good at capturing that disjunction: "and one day everyone decides/ to bale their hay/ every single field down/ all at once everyone// all at once/ my friend is sick/ sick and far away." VERDICT An intriguing, risk-taking work, with special appeal for millennials and crossover readers; poem-photograph collages throughout.