In Captivity

In Captivity takes its title from the seventh and last of the medieval Unicorn Tapestries. Camille Guthrie transposes the pastoral themes and imagery of the tapestries with those of modern, urban life in an ingenious re-imagining of both. Amidst her flora and fauna, we encounter a lookout, a boyfriend, informants, hunters, poets, and a rock star--all fresh translations of familiar figures. Here, the sought-after unicorn becomes a blank figure for the beloved, for knowledge, for vision. And the allegory of the hunt turns into an errant pursuit of the elusive prey of meaning. As in her debut, The Master Thief, Guthrie moves between traditional and modern poetic forms, which become agile vehicles for wildly varying emotional registers. These fearless poems invite the reader to be startled by ideas and ambushed by beauty.