The Exile House

Words set loose in a northern landscape in pursuit of myth: Erling Friis-Baastad's poems search for resonance with the elements. The challenge is one of dislocation: hope lies in petitioning song. The answers that arrive from a nearby mountain range or the opposite shore of a lake are always a surprise, sometimes a shock, suggesting connection just "beyond the reach/ of our numb hands." Taut, spare, haunting, the poems in this collection draw on both Old and New World images to fashion a distinctive circumpolar voice.