Fischer, Norman: Nature

Tuumba Press, paperback Publication Date: February 21, 2021 Publisher Marketing: A long poem that's an essay but not, a work of philosophy but not, a gently stated argument that seems to have multiple points heading in multiple directions; a text about nature but also about thinking, language, identity, consciousness, science, idealism, economics, religion, and, in general, about the unsettling (in case you haven't noticed) paradox of being human in a human, non-human world, Norman Fischer's NATURE (a fractured re-do of Emerson) is a rare pleasure. While what exactly—if anything—is being proposed isn't so clear, the writing proceeds serenely in straightforwardly luminous fashion, constantly skirting the edge of the irony that it seems to indicate is built into all language acts (which is perhaps the point behind the point?). The catastrophe of climate change and blind human cruelty (contemporary disasters Emerson would have had little appreciation of) is present in every line of the te