In this slim collection of poetry, each page has twelve lines of free verse. The verses are truly free—free of punctuation, free of rhyme, free of any set meter, and free to run wild. When you start page one, you might even think the lines are free of any meaning or sense.
You will go into reading this book expecting a poetic fable about a goat walking toward the edge of land. The logical side of your brain will try to connect each of the poems in this “book-length poetic sequence” as Darren C. Demaree himself calls it. The abstraction the poet creates will disrupt the simplification your brain wants to do to the content. It is not a simple story or a fable with a clear moral. It is an adventure around the outskirts of creativity and wilderness.
It’s not illogical or meaningless. This is how some poets build an argument: with abstraction. For Demaree “the advance away / from abstract thought might ruin the arts for a bit”. It’s clear in this collection that he wants to pull us back into the wilds of abstract thought.
