Kirlian Effect

In her third poetry collection, Lori Lamothe contemplates the connections-and disconnections-that bind us to each other and the natural world. Just as Kirlian photography captures objects in electromagnetic fields, the book depicts the ever-shifting landscape of light and shadow that inheres in ordinary life. These poems about violins, dinosaurs, shooting victims, ghost hunters, heroin-addicted newborns, agoraphobics, trampolines and orchids reveal "energy's bones" that "shift along the spectrum from health to sickness/presence to absence." In doing so, they seek to uncover a route through the past that circles back "into the dark surge of endless beginning."