You Ask Me to Talk about the Interior

You Ask Me to Talk About the Interior emerges out of the ontological shock and double-bind of there being a world (rather than nothing at all), and inhabiting this world that "depends on violence." Still, Carolina Ebeid writes, "I have wanted / to make you something // beautiful." Drawing on influences such as Roland Barthes's notion of the punctum (the photographic detail that pierces the viewer) to the repertoire of circles and twirls--the veronicas--bullfighters make with the red cape to attract the bull, Ebeid explores a poetics that is at once intricate and intimate. The poems in this book move by way of metaphors and poetic turns that reveal and wound; they cover territories ranging from personal confession and diagnosis to political catastrophes such as war and exile. Witnessing again to the lyric as art of ethical reckoning, each poem in You Ask Me to Talk About the Interior is an ardent fathoming of our most interior selves, each poem in Ebeid's long-awaited first collection is a momentary "allegory for the soul."