Lost Alphabet

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In an interview, Lisa Olstein has said, "I don't want poetry to limit itself to reflecting or recapitulating experience; I want it to be an experience." In her daring new book, an unnamed lepidopterist—living in a hut on the edge of an unidentified village—is drawn ever deeper into unexpected engrossing worlds. Structured as a naturalist's notebook, yet suggesting an ars poetica, this five-part sequence of prose poems creates a layered pilgrimage into the consequences of intensive study, the trials of being an outsider, and the process of metamorphosis. Along with the speaker's enigmatic companion Ilya, who arrives one day and never leaves, the reader embarks on a journey through the paradoxes that imbue desire, the waywardness of intention, and the power of experience to transform.