Map of Dreams

From ancient tales through post-modern narratives, the quest for the Wandering Islands, a version of paradise, has been a mainstay of the western literary imagination. Map of Dreams, a scintillating log of one such voyage, features such wonders as an animate figurehead, an island that etherizes, and a pilot who navigates by smell. Shot through with lists of Babylonian secrets and catalogues of books in hermetic libraries, this sequence is nonetheless as approachable as the Odyssey and the Canterbury Tales, to which the poet's gleaming narrative and vivid sketches are gracefully indebted.