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A collection from celebrated poet Martha Ronk considering the relationship between person, body, and place.  The Place One Is explores the intersection of person and place, the ways in which changes in the tangible world alter oneâ¿s vision, bodily posture, vocabulary, and concern forâ¿to take one exampleâ¿the dwindling water supply in California. The bodyâ¿s position, its geometry, and the topography of the surrounding land become less and less recognizable as body and world blend together. Gravel giving way underfoot mirrors the way that words dissolve into mumbles, and the skeleton of a rusty car on the sand appears like oneâ¿s own skeleton. Ronk shows that disintegration here is disintegration there. These poems also wonder at interdependence, considering how lines intersect and continue to connect us to the seaâ¿and to islands, lagoons, greenery, sky, and space.  In the first part of the collection, the poems focus on a rural landscape, and in the second part, they consider the overly bright urban world of Los Angeles. Â
"The poems in the book attempt to locate the slippery presence of silence in paintings and photographs, in the absences of bird sound, in ruin, pauses, and grief, and in the opaqueness of others and oneself. They address both the destruction behind some kinds of silence and the revitalizing possibilities in silent contemplation"--
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