John High

Vanishing Acts John High

Poetry. VANISHING ACTS is an astounding, yet oddly casual and unselfconscious, achievement. In a dark land beyond death, a cast of characters--including a one- eyed boy, a mute girl, carnival performers, bicyclists, handless monks, ghost-women, film- makers--wanders inside and outside landscape and language, and through various ancient Chinese religious texts. Sometimes laconic (just a scrawled note left by one character for another) and sometimes an obsessive rush of language barely patched together with ampersands, the passion of this poem nearly overwhelms. Hold onto your hats for this one!--Norman Fischer