Adrienne Rich once said that “until we know the assumptions in which we are drenched, we cannot know ourselves.” In her latest collection of prose poems, Laura Madeline Wiseman reminds us that self and fable are intimate nemeses. In these poems, the mermaid becomes a stunning trope for discovery and relentless subversion, and through the…
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Spindrift Monroe
Existing beyond the boundaries of historical renderings and “Waterhouse reproductions,” Wiseman’s mermaids are intelligent, passionate, dangerous, and endangered. Wiseman brings them to life (and death) in exquisitely crafted narratives that play on the edges of dreams and plunge into the deepest human fears. In her hands ocean becomes mirror and the tale/tail of the mermaid…
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Spindrift Waite
The poems in Spindrift blur the already fragmented lines of gender, offering us mermaids with beards, hairy nipples, and a thirst for damaged remains. Through Wiseman’s formal restraint and inventive definitions, we are invited into the deep sea of the unknown, and we find out the unknown knows us—knows our wars, our corporations, the crumbling…
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