by Megan Levad
WHY WE LIVE IN THE DARK AGES considers how information about science and history is transmitted through language, rather than empirical experience—and how successful that transmission often is, despite its flaws. Levad holds her poems up to us as a mirror, showing the absurdity, helplessness and humor of the human condition. These poems are not meta or worried about where they might fit into the canon. Levad doesn't employ the usual poetic arsenal, although at its heart this book wonders and ruminates over the magic of language—not how we craft our stories for the page, but how we actually tell them.
