Degrees of Latitude

Laurel Blossom's Degrees of Latitude is a book-length poem, really, divided by section breaks to give air: these are short sections, for the most part, and breezy, this is a book-length narrative that covers family and personal history and moves seamlessly through time and space. “[This is] almost a lyric novel, so sweepingly re-imagined is the life it illuminates but it is as well an expedition into territory seldom explored in lyric mode. Blossom begins her journey on an icebreaker during the white nights of a polar north―cold as childhood―and then turns her gaze upon the uncharted regions of family history, secrecy and illusion, bravely and with uncommon self-knowledge, in deft and beautifully cadenced language that belies the arduousness of her task. This work crosses, formally and insightfully, the traditional borders of confession and memoir, and moves into the unknown, mapping what is visible as well as what has, until now, been hidden. I have been waiting a long time to read this book, and it is very much worth the wait.”