Poetry. SECRET HISTORIES is interested in the way history is constructed as an active engagement with a non-negotiable future, as opposed to the passive receipt of past "truths." "Steppe Work" presents itself as recovered fragments from the height of the Mongol Empire, the largest land-based empire in history. "Last Man Standing" is offered in the classical form of a shepherd's calendar, counting down the last 12 months of the last man alive on earth. Between and through these sequences, the poem "Pre/Science" attempts to inhabit a present moment that is continually slipping into the layered time-keeping of human consciousness. In fragments and disjointed observations, the book tries to replicate and in fact become the process of "making" history itself.

Author City: JAMESTOWN, RI USA

Craig Watson is the author of eleven books and chapbooks. His poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous literary journals since 1982. His recent book SECRET HISTORIES (Burning Deck, 2007) completes a trilogy that includes FREE WILL (Roof Books, 2000) and TRUE NEWS (Instance Press, 2002). Among other considerations, these books traverse the languages and silences that by turn construct and erase history, even as its actual subjects struggle to endure. His latest collection, SLEEPWALKING WITH ORPHEUS, was published by Shearsman Books in 2011.