The Figure of a Man Being Swallowed by a Fish

By: Joshua Weiner

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Synopsis: At the heart of Joshua WeinerOCOs new book is an extended poem with a bold political dimension and great intellectual ambition. It fuses the poetOCOs point of view with Walt WhitmanOCOs to narrate a decentered time-traveling collage about Rock Creek, a tributary of the Potomac that runs through Washington, DC. For Weiner, Rock Creek is the location of myriad kinds of movement, streaming, and joining: personal enterprise and financial capital; national politics, murder, sex, and homelessness; the Civil War and collective history; music, spiritual awakening, personal memory, and pastoral vision. The questions that arise from the opening foundational poem inform the others in the collection, which range widely from the dramatic arrival of an uncanny charismatic totem that titles the volume to intimate reflections on family, illness, and dream visions. The virtues of WeinerOCOs earlier booksOCodiscursive intelligence, formal control, an eccentric and intriguing ear, and a wide-ranging curiosity matched to variety of feelingOCoare all present here. But in "The Figure of a Man Being Swallowed by a Fish," Weiner has discovered a new poetic idiom, one that is stripped down, rhythmically jagged, and comprehensively philosophical about human limits.