Alexandra Kleeman Reviews Elisa Gabbert's The Unreality of Memory

Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Alexandra Kleeman directs our attention to poet Elisa Gabbert's new book, The Unreality of Memory (FSG). "Disaster defies not only comprehension but representation," Kleeman notes. "When we try to translate it into language, we grant it a tidy order that contradicts its essential nature." More: 

This paradox is the starting point of the poet Elisa Gabbert’s new collection of thematically linked essays, “The Unreality of Memory.” At a time when extreme climate change, economic recession and a global health crisis make it crucial to recognize our predicament clearly, how can we make the disastrous seem real enough to inspire effective action? In her opening essay, Gabbert (the Book Review’s poetry columnist) describes watching a computer-animated re-creation of the sinking of the Titanic, a high-tech rendering that is also a reduction: “There is no violin music, no voice-over. The ship is lit up, glowing yellow in the night, but the only sound, apart from a few emergency flares and engine explosions, is of water sloshing into and against the ship. The overall impression is of near silence. It’s almost soothing.”

Read on at the New York Times.