Description
IN|FILTRATION is an anthology of contemporary Hudson Valley poetry that in one sense or another is innovative. The poets’ work is sometimes formally original and other times innovative in the use of more familiar poetic forms: old bottle/new wine; new bottle/old wine; and, quite often, new bottle/new wine. Much of the poetry here is directly or indirectly in conversation with national and international movements directed toward more exploratory uses of the medium—work that goes beyond the explorer’s map into uncharted territories, places where the map tatters in the explorer’s pocket and another world begins. Like explorers the editors have sought to map the contemporary currents of radical poetics in the Hudson Valley. There is truly an enormous wealth of poetic activity in the region, and of course such an exploration cannot be comprehensive. Themselves poets, the editors present what they take to be the salient characteristic of the region in their essay “A Hudson Valley Salt Line” at the end of the anthology, pointing to the geological, human and cultural histories of the Hudson Valley as they dovetail with its poetries. They also provide their rationale for the title IN|FILTRATION with particular reference to the Hudson River’s salt line, which becomes the essay’s key trope.
