Reviewed by Ian Dreiblatt

“The story began,” the singular Russian poet Arkadii Dragomoshchenko once wrote, “without resistance, as a rumor, a conch shell in the fingers.” This scene, where we dream through a kind of lyrical murk, something uncertain pulsing in the semantic mist, is classic Dragomoshchenko; consciousness, in all its bizarreness and intricacy, finds its bearings by inviting, and also resisting, meaning. A little further into the poem, Dragomoshchenko writes, “Names come later, resembling diaries, / lagoons, lanterns, chalk. Later still, in common speech, / ‘now’ encounters the word ‘now.’” Awakeness narrates its discovery of itself. . .