Object Permanence

"Object permanence" refers to the early developmental stage in which the child learns that the world exists independently of one's own ability to perceive it. In this, Michelle Gil-Montero's first full-length collection, lyric poems cling to the elusive debris of daily life in order to invoke, paradoxically, its impermanence. As the "spare valuables" of one daily life, these poems summon the liminal world of early motherhood, of early morning, of seasons in transition. In a terrain of post-industrial landscapes at once familiar and not---a space where what *isn't* encroaches on what *is*---Gil-Montero's emotionally resonant lyrics pressure the expressive possibilities of language. Sound hovers on the verge of becoming object. Object threatens to evaporate into sound.