Poetry. "Does culture invent language or does language invent culture? In Susan Schultz's MEMORY CARDS & ADOPTION PAPERS both realities teeter and crash, making Origin a profligate occasion without end. These poems examine the dynamics of Being through the linguistic portholes of individual and collective history, knowing all the while that 'our natural language is translation, and we cannot get it right...' And yet, even inside the simulacrae where 'the language is a nomad' which 'eventually...pulls up its tent,' Shultz's dedication to the living imaginary is unflinching. 'What we owe the commonwealth is allegiance to the common,' she writes, and MEMORY CARDS & ADOPTION PAPERS reifies that fealty. A brilliant book!"—Claudia Keelan

Author City: HONOLULU, HI USA

Susan M. Schultz is a poet, critic, and publisher who lives in Kane`ohe, Hawai`i on the island of O`ahu. She is author of ADDENDA (Meow Press, 1998), ALEATORY ALLEGORIES (Salt Publishing, 2000), MEMORY CARDS AND ADOPTION PAPERS (Potes & Poets Press, 2001), And Then Something Happened (Salt Publishing, 2004), No Guns, No Durian (Tinfish Press, 2004), A Poetics of Impasse in Modern and Contemporary American Poetry (University of Alabama Press, 2005), DEMENTIA BLOG (Singing Horse Press, 2008) and MEMORY CARDS: 2010-2011 SERIES (Singing Horse Press, 2011); and she edited The Tribe of John: Ashbery and Contemporary Poetry (University of Alabama Press, 1995). She edits Tinfish Press and teaches at the University of Hawai`i-Manoa.

Reviews and Other Links
Hank Lazer @ Rain Taxi