The Eye-Shift of Surface

Meredith Quartermain

An astonishingly new collection of prose poems by Meredith Quartermain, The Eye-Shift of Surface explores the permutations of the word “I” (its abbreviations, roots, utterance and grammar) and its intimate connection with the word “eye.”

Seeing this word play further through textured language that highlights connotation, assonance, and rhythm over reference, Eye-Shift observes the ways in which words work with master narratives and socially construct selves.

Here are the vocabularies of “I” including ways in which the letter is used as more than linguistic container of self. Anti-confessional in tone these playful associations challenge the transparent notion that “I” sees everything.

Eye-Shift explores the blurs between self, world and language; a peripheral vision in language that reveals more than meets the “I.”

meredith quartermain

Meredith Quartermain has published and read her work in Canada, the US and Britain. Her chapbooks include Terms of Sale (Meow, 1996), Abstract Relations (Keefer Street, 1998), Veers (Backwoods Broadsides, 1998), Spatial Relations (Diaeresis, 2001) and Inland Passage (housepress, 2001). With Robin Blaser, she recently completed a series of poems, entitled Wanders (Nomados, 2002), some of which have appeared in Matrix.

Her work has also appeard in West Coast Line, Queen Street Quarterly, Raddle Moon, Five Fingers Review, Chain, Sulfur, Tinfish, Potepoetzine, Alterran Poetry Assemblage, East Village Poetry Web, on word, Goodfoot, and The Capilano Review, and is forthcoming in West Coast Line and Canadian Literature.

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