No Matter

Jana Prikryl's No Matter argues for the necessity of vision in a time of darkness. Set in cities toppling past the point of decline-and-fall--Rome, London, Dublin, and most of all New York--these poems capture the experience of being human in the late days of empire, when the laws protecting weak from strong are being torn away. Ranging from free verse through sonnets and invented forms, Prikryl's poems insist that every demolition also builds something new and unforeseen. In poems whose one-word titles give the book a percussive rhythm, Prikryl gives voice to the shifting anxieties and fortitude of the powerless. An ancient Sibyl is the presiding spirit, tired of being the conscience of a people addicted to ancient codes of domination. Dido gets the last word on the male lust for conquest. The American tradition of self-reliance shrivels into the narcissism of the survivalist. Scraps of Moby-Dick, Coriolanus, Virginia Woolf, and Heraclitus drift through the poems like ghosts. New York City is taken hostage by the super-rich, and a scramble for resources infects each relationship. Yet the city's glamour and importance can't be denied- there are love poems for friends, for David Bowie, for all kinds of new arrivals who make every city worth saving. In reactionary times, these poems say, we all have a responsibility to use our imagination. No Matter is an elegy for our ongoing moment, when what seemed permanent suddenly appears to be on the brink of collapse.