I entered without words: Poems

Jody Gladding's book of poems explores landscape as a source of language, composed and printed in a landscape format, and inspired by poets and visual artists. It offers multiple, interwoven meanings and has facing-page French versions, making it an ambitious, innovative, and striking collection.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 80 pages
Publication date: 13 September 2022
Publisher: Princeton University Press

In this captivating collection of poems, award-winning poet and translator Jody Gladding delves into the fascinating interplay between language and landscape, exploring the latter as a rich source of linguistic inspiration. Composed and printed in a landscape format, these minimalist, serene, playful, meditative, and open-ended poems invite readers to engage with the natural world on a sensory level. Drawing inspiration from a diverse range of poets, including A. R. Ammons, Lorine Niedecker, Gustaf Sobin, and Jean Valentine, as well as visual artists such as Ann Hamilton, Roni Horn, and Cecilia Vicuña, Gladding pushes the boundaries of poetic form and embraces the spatial possibilities within the page. By utilizing white space and experimenting with various typefaces, he creates a visually stunning and immersive experience for the reader.

As the page unfolds, words gracefully constellation around bolded through lines, offering multiple, interwoven meanings that interact with each other and the reader, who is free to navigate through these meanings at their own pace. This unique approach creates poems that are spatial, nonlinear, and infinitely diverse with each reading, inviting a deep exploration and interpretation of the natural world.

In an additional layer of richness, many of the poems in the collection feature facing-page French versions, allowing readers to appreciate the beauty of bilingualism and the nuanced interplay between languages. "Landscape-oriented" in every sense, this ambitious, innovative, and striking collection by Jody Gladding stands as a testament to the power of poetry to transcend boundaries and ignite our imagination. It invites us to immerse ourselves in the landscapes that surround us, to perceive them as a source of linguistic and artistic inspiration, and to discover the endless possibilities that arise when language and landscape converge.

Weight: 142g
Dimension: 204 x 204 x 10 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780691238968