Author Description

The poems in Cole Swensen's Try explore the intersection of writing with the visual arts, particularly late medieval and early Renaissance paintings. They also explore writing as a visual vehicle, both as a pattern across a field and as a catalyst for imagery. Looking at the paintings themselves involves examining the way that they make meaning and, in contrast, the way that words make meaning of them and of themselves - what happens when you have a representation of a representation? All the poems in this collection weave in and out of proximity to visual work, sometimes from the distance of a gallery viewer, sometimes as a character in the painting itself. Issues of narrative sequence and time float through the collection but are always subordinate to the play and rule of language on the page.