{"product_id":"portulans-jason-sommer-9780226737393","title":"Portulans","description":"Taking inspiration from medieval sea charts--portulans--the poems in Jason Sommer's collection bring a fresh variation to the ancient metaphor of life as a journey. Creating a coordinate system charting paths between ports and the dangers that surrounded them, portulans offered webs of routes and images through which sailors could navigate. These maps--both accurate and beautifully illustrated--guided mariners from port to port weaving paths at the threshold of the open sea. Similarly, the course of these poems navigates familiar mysteries and perennial questions through times of unbelief, asking whether consciousness is anchored in the transcendent, if inward travel can descend past the self, and if the universe can be accounted for by physics alone. \u003cbr\u003e Is there more to the story that you remember and hesitate \u003cbr\u003e to say? Your eyes, though, scanning upward in their sockets, \u003cbr\u003e do seem to search memory, but for what may be gone already, \u003cbr\u003e gone to where it goes--wherever it came from--gone as can be imagined, \u003cbr\u003e down into things, in past flesh and bark, marrow and pith, and down, \u003cbr\u003e down into molecule, atom, particle, vanishing into theory. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Through this collection, Sommer takes us to the ocean floor, into the basement, out the front door, through multiverses, and in and out of dreams. Along the way, he considers whether art--the beauty of the map--can provide momentary meaning against a backdrop of oblivion. Drawing on history and myth, the voices in these poems consider what can and cannot be known of the self and the other, of our values, and of what we insist has permanence. These are poems of searching. Like ancient cartographers who lent lavish decoration to their maps, the poems in \u003ci\u003ePortulans \u003c\/i\u003eilluminate possibilities of beauty in each journey.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Jason Sommer\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 022673739X\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780226737393\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Chicago Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 03\/02\/2021\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 80\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.27lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.30h x 5.50w x 0.30d","brand":"Jason Sommer","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":43993432293631,"sku":"9780226737393","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_45184152-7933-44b4-8975-e9bf8c827357.jpg?v=1683324315","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/portulans-jason-sommer-9780226737393","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}