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Hydrologos is one long poem composed in five suites and a coda, and spoken through masks. It is a poem about a specific
passion, the one that always follows love: sorrow. What happens to a human being under the geologic pressure of this passion? — One calls out, and the world’s response is silence. The work of sorrowing, one learns, is the work — the endless work — of listening, by which the listener is changed. At the poem’s centre is the original lyric elegy, the myth of Orpheus,but reimagined from the perspective of Eurydike, who makes her own descent into the underworld, to rescue Death. The poem spirals out from this centre, ranging widely across literary eras and genres, engaging with ancient Greek mythtellers and philosophers; with Polish painters and Russian filmmakers; with German Romantic and contemporary Canadian poets. An astonishing debut.

-From the Publisher