The Spilled Ink of Time

This latest book by Jonas Zdanys continues his multi-volume exploration of some potentials of the lyrical-narrative voice in poetry. This volume probes the epiphanic moments revealed by the lyrical voice and the human stories celebrated by the narrative impulse, both within and surrounding moments of immediate insight. The poems in this collection reflect those dual patterns, often taking the reader beyond set expectations and moving to more chaotic frameworks made possible by surrealist and magical realist perspectives. In doing so, Zdanys continues to present the world as an unbound frame where all things can be imagined and where human experience is not limited merely to the familiar. That has been an organizing thematic principle of several of his earlier books. It finds particular reaffirmation in this volume, which speaks through vivid imagery and textured language to present the contours of the immediate world lit by the poetic imagination and what it may mean to be human in it.

"Zdanys is as close to consistently revealing luminosity as anyone." World Literature Today