Gold Passage

Iris Jamahl Dunkle's new book Gold Passage was chosen for the Trio Award by Ross Gay, who said "There is so much to admire in Gold Passage: the precise music; the strangeness and mystery; the deep wonder expressed in straight narratives and interior, chambered lyrics; a big human heart trying to make some sense of the unknowable world.  And too, magical outbursts of image and song--'I bloomed like a goddamned hyacinth' - to which I say Amen." In this debut collection Dunkle writes about growing up in rural Northern California and the history that haunts her small town.  The collection examines history and domestic themes such as growing up, finding a home and having children.  In Dunkle's work the ordinary takes on mythic proportions and the spiritual life emerges tethered to the day to day.  Many of the poems reflect of the self in the relation to the world around us.  In the opening poem, "Dinosaur," which explores the idea of both scientific and spiritual faith, the speaker exclaims, "I am an alphabet of bones, / my own telling." Other poems such as "After Elegy" and "Body's Code" stretch the limits of lyric by incorporating computer programming.  Throughout the collection nature reveals what the human mind cannot, the buried relics of history and the invisible cartography of love.