Paradise Loft

Laurence Carr's Paradise Loft is a collection of poems that explores time. Paradise Loft is a collection that explores time. Countless writers have shown how time affects the characters within their narra- tives: Proust, perhaps at the centerpiece, with In Search of Lost Time, Virginia Woolf with The Waves and Orlando, and the over- looked but intriguing Lord Dunsany fantasy-romance, The King

of Elfland's Daughter. In Paradise Loft, poems are arranged into nine sections beginning with a prologue: "God's Diary/Day 5", a timeless timeframe. It is followed by "Wording/Morning", thoughts on morning writing; "Journeyman I", a sequence of time-travels; "Feline Dreams" on the afterlives of cats, ending with the mid-20th century romance, "The Ballad of Henrietta Pussycat and Her Lover Thief Coyote." Next, "Even She" are studies, much like an artist might keep in a sketchbook. The prose poems in "time past" bring up collected memories that have lingered long enough to record. "Journeyman II" continues the time-travels, and "Wording/Eve- ning" shows the end of day grasping at end of day thoughts. The book closes with "in time" seven bilingual dreamscapes conjure themselves between two and seven A.M. and bring on a new beginning.