Slot

Poetry. An experiential investigation of how we move through cultural landmarks and institutions, SLOT presents a lyrical and thinking response to official, landscaped memory. In the book, a person slips in and out of highly designed museums and memorials, looks for a mentor who is more than a tour guide, rebels during the official tour, and occasionally finds the lament she is looking for: in comparisons across history, in ambiguous photo sequences, and in poetry. The resulting text stages a quiet argument between the persistent urge to "slot" things—into narratives, frames, archives—and a clear view of what, by resisting, remains. "SLOT pulls us through a beautiful yet harrowing poetic journey through the sediment of memory that has come to be called 9/11. By confronting the shock and desperation of violence on that achingly gorgeous autumn day, Jill Magi finds the words and images to allow us to re-member fragments of emotion and national identity that the act of memorializing has made us forget"—Robin Kelley.