Caroline Bergvall’s “Drift,” in Gallery Form

A couple of weeks ago, I read Caroline Bergvall’s Drift, and had one of the most jaw-dropping reading experiences I’ve had in the last few months. If Bergvall’s book were a collection of prose poems, or a meditation on language and its limits, or a nonfiction work documenting national tragedies on the water, it would be hugely effective; instead, it’s all three, a poetic and freeform work that’s both associative and documentarian.

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#tobyreads: Adrift, in Words and Games

I spent a little time in Nantucket about two years ago. I remember the ferry trip out and back; I remember mist and crowds on the island. It was early December; it was cold, and the sky over the island looked strange. I thought about the water and the island a lot when I was reading Caroline Bergvall’s Drift. I thought about that and I thought about Iceland and I thought about accounts I’d read of refugees and travelers in jeopardy […]

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