BREAKING NEWS: This book was nominated for the Governor General's Literary Awards (click poetry tab), Canada's top literary prize.
I'm not sure I can top Kate's inscription in my copy "some pulp, some porn, some poetry" as a review for her stylistic story poem. I think I've said here before that I like my theater experimental, but my literature linear. Despite my literary laziness I didn't find Fieldnotes difficult to stick with. I was taken in right away with a screenplay element that starts immediately--as in, begins on the inside cover.
With poetry, it's often easier to get a grip if you can see/hear it read by the author. Thanks to YouTube, here's your chance with FaF:
The lovers in this tale are an archivist and a forensic anthropologist. As Kate posits in her reading above, forensic anthropologists are likely to be fucked up from their work. The archivist is pretty cool, though. This book is for you if you like spending time in the brain of someone really smart, whose brain makes connections you can't even always follow but that you can appreciate nonetheless. It's for you if you like different styles and forms, one on top of the other. This book is most especially for me in the screenplay sections I referenced earlier. As a former director, I love imagining the stage directions come to life, plus that's where Kate's cunning is most accessible to me. The poetry, too, chronicling the anthropologist's (did you notice that if you remove the nthro, you get apologist?) effort to get everything down could take hours to savor if you let it. Here's a semi-random sample, from page 33:
Occasionally a person is sufficiently close
completely disintegrated
From the moment meeting the biblical landscrape, don't rule out
shock
lethal reflexes
Decapitated component in sandals clutching a transparent
folder returns to scene