Representing Absence

In Representing Absence, Deborah Meadows draws on a practice of poetry composition as palimpsest: writing on top, or through, other writing evoking writers such as Baudelaire, Melville in the excerpts from "The Theory of Subjectivity in Moby-Dick," Dante, and video artist, Bill Viola in "Not a Treatise on the Line Segment."
To return to the 19th Century of Melville becomes a study of social practice and discourse, both its encyclopedic project and attempts at democratic meeting under the long shadow of remembered monarchy - the sound of naturalized assumptions that haunt us today. "Will Narcissus result in carnage..." sets action against a place where "originals are required: cement/banisters merge public and private lives,..." Floodlights are directed toward point of view, limited social voice, and violence of the factory, whaling fleet, and property lines.