Through a Window

Imagine Norman Fischer’s career built on sitting and looking inward. Suddenly, Covid, and the whole world is sitting and looking inward (what choice did we have), so Fischer, adventurer that he is, starts writing Through a Window about sitting and looking out a window. This new world of looking outward then encounters language outside the window “some [other branch] Eu / Cal / Ip / Tus.” This strange quest into poetry appears to someone carefully prepared yet shocked as if by the unexpected for this moment of vision.

In his deadpan style, Fischer strikes a droll chord with the poem and the world together as “an object to be domesti- / cated one can grip / history in persons/ / places/tales/memory in looking / through distancespace at what’s / not gripped in hand.” Every few days for a year, these short, linked poems appeared on the page as the scene spread out before Fischer change.

Through a Window is not a spiritual quest as much as reading the thrust of short, poetic lines into a “factual factual / world.” Leaning forward into the language of landscape and drawing back into thought, Fischer’s poetry finds itself more realized through connecting inside and outside than either singularity can opine.

New York, NY: Roof Books (October, 2024)

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