Cirrus@Austlit

'It’s not quite right to call Eileen Chong’s sixth book of poetry, We Speak of Flowers, a collection. As Chong explains in her author’s note, this is a single, book-length poem, whose 101 discrete fragments “can be read in any order”. One might pick their way through the poem at random or read slowly forward while circling continuously back. Either way, “the shifting juxtapositions will give rise to innumerable permutations,” Chong tells us. “Each reading will construct the poem anew.”' (Introduction)