Canals of Mars

The beauty and strangeness of inner landscapes is reflected in these powerful poems. As each poem tends to the intricacies of human experience, their focus on the fractal patterns within familiar structures—the tree within the leaf, the series of recurrences that unfold to create a fugue—add an element of discovery and revelation to the poems, modulating and rendering strange these musings on what is ostensibly human.

Patrick McGuinness is a lecturer and poet whose accomplishments include the Levinson Prize for poetry from the American Poetry Foundation. He is the author of Symbolism, Decadence, and the Fin de Siecle and coauthor of Maurice Maeterlinck and the Making of Modern Theatre.