Realm Sixty-Four

Poetry. Taking its name from the literal field of the chessboard, Kristi Maxwell's first book explores the dynamics of engagement, both through and within language. These poems are interested in the strategies that interactions encompass -- interactions between words, between illusion and non-illusion, between idea and image, between speakers, between voices, and between reader and text. From the history of the chess-playing automaton known as The Turk to a series of flirtations cadged in the game's battlefield language, the subjects of Maxwell's poems are rarely what they seem to be. "Like the minimalist sculptors we have learned to admire without their theories mattering anymore, these poems have pure, ephemeral lines that suggest much thought about time and utterance, yet they float free without any need for explanation. This can happen partly because Maxwell has an inspired sense of the look of the page. If you wanted to blur on her words, you would still see beauty, harmony and space" -- Fanny Howe.