Drawing inspiration from Novalis (1772-1801) a poet who, like the other adherents of early German Romanticism, believed in the correspondence between inner and outer worlds, Kwasny divines the palpable and ineffable ways in which inherited traditions-indigenous culture, mythology, romanticism, modernism, surrealism, postmodernism, and more-inform daily life. Finding inspiration in the mountain West, Kwasny weaves a shimmering web of connections. Reading Novalis in Montana stretches boundaries with a section of 'reading poems'-poems in dialogue with romantic and modernist poets, including Ezra Pound, H. D., Novalis, Dickinson, as well as a sequence that is a twenty-first century take on 'The Wasteland,' included with stunning lyric poems. Using luxuriant syntax to string together conditional clauses, these poems throw the reader backward and forward within a line and a poem. Alternatively, repetition offers a commentary on meaning, chopping perception into fragments. Combined with a charming self-qualification that deliberately interrupts momentum, this work smartly ties the reader back down to earth. Throughout details of lived experience emerge-hiking through the Pacific Northwest, helping a friend deal with cancer, sorting through the ruins of a relationship -and yet the interior voice is always tuned to the physical world, envisioning the shared understanding that connects all life. | Reading Novalis in Montana by Melissa Kwasny, Paperback | Indigo Chapters