In a Mist

"The spare, elegiac poems in Geoffrey O'Brien's new collection move at the borderline between actual memory and screen memory. I love their chiseled intimate strangeness. Reading them I discover such marvels as 'shivers of light/Clashing/ or 'Not knowing who/or what we are/ we at least know when.' A pervading sense of loss envelops many of his finest poems in a mist of elliptical particles produced by distance. His language, echoing the best moments of his poetic film criticism, offers up fugitive ghost words and spectral syllables - dreamed or imagined. 'The shop is shuttered/ and the yard so quiet/you can hear the noise/of shadows vanishing.'" - Susan Howe