Camera Obscura

erica lewis's camera obscurais a stunning meditation on the relationship between things in the world and our perception of them. Beginning with a photograph "that made me think about how time and the constant mutability of everything is . . . the underlying story of all the stories we write," her words show us - indeed literally see - how "the object exists outside us without our taking part in it"; how "to bring the picture into focus"; how "an image sparks another image"; indeed, how (in an eyeblink) "to trap the image between frames," so that when "memory stands up in slow motion" there will somehow be "no ideas only surfaces, no surfaces only words, no words only textures, no textures only/ contingent connections." Everyone who cares about the physics of perception in words will want to read this book. -Stephen Ratcliffe erica lewis uses the shifts and variables of perception as both an aesthetic and as a starting point for an exploration of the nature of individual responsibility in this world. /camera obscura /is a meditative philosophical poem. And yet at the same time it is also interestingly a very personal poem, one about the intimacy between artist and writer-viewer. And more than anything, it is beautiful, moving, richly complicating. -Juliana Spahr