There's nobody else writing quite like Lawrence Raab, with his confident, efficient elegance, about the mysterious ways in which what we think and what can be known so often betray one another. In this marvelous new poem, "The Invention of Everyday Life," we find the poet recounting several seemingly unrelated stories, each interrupting, then mixing with another story, slyly and slowly involving us with the desires and deceptions of his characters. We meet the jilted lover, Pierre; an explorer whose tale may or may not be true; a frustrated art critic; the eccentric artist Kurt Schwitters who makes art by hiding things; the narrator's wife, who at the end says, "Trust me..." But who or what can we trust in a world "concealed... by its own appearance."? Raab is mum about the answer-It's our job to take on the role of the necessary detective in this tour de force of storytelling.
