Poetry. African American studies. Postulating a new age of iron with these highly wrought lines, Renee Gladman questions how we experience our life and times, what is real and what is fantasy. She combines elements of narrative with an attention towords and letters that reminds us how much her usual practice of fiction is informed by her sense of poetry. Like wrought iron itself these graceful, unpredictable patterns stand out against the stark day. "the vivid/ black /unseeing" Here a landscape is created and taken apart.

Renee Gladman lives in Boston, Massachusettes, where she publishes Leon Works, a press for experimental fiction and cross-genre writing. Her books include NEWCOMER CAN'T SWIM (Kelsey Street Press, 2007), A PICTURE-FEELING (Roof Books, 2005), THE ACTIVIST (Krupskaya, 2003), JUICE (Kelsey Street Press, 2000), NOT RIGHT NOW (Second Story Books, 1998), and Arlem (Idiom Books, 1996). A novella Event Factory is forthcoming from Dorothy, a publishing project in fall 2010. She teaches at Brown University in the Program for Literary Arts.