Book Of No Ledge: Visual Poems (visual Poetry Series Pleiades Press) [Paperback]

As usual, it starts with love. I had my heart set on the door-to-door encyclopedia salesboy. So begins Nance Van Winckels latest collection of poetically altered encyclopedia entries that feature a mixture of quirky social satire and absurdist wit.

Entries like The Importance of Mood to Man use an encyclopedic tone to insist: Your body is two-thirds water. Mood is one-third body and Life and health depend on the mood taken into the body each day. An anatomic diagram of the nose is accompanied by the promise, A nose can smell rain coming. Alongside illustrations of the vestibule, the meatus, and the conchus can be found lines of text like, As the one you love steps onto / your stoop / a widening wind / underscores the skys pummel. Reminiscent of recent visual-poetic hybrids by such writers as Matthea Harvey and Bianca Stone, Van Winckels ground-breaking innovations must be seen to be believed.?