Sublingual

sublingual is perhaps the most highly structured yet of bissett's "textual visions." Its first seven poems construct a Genesis, beginning with a poem of birth--our pre- or sublingual first breath a phenomenological gesture of recognition, of both being and belonging, in and of the world.

Fifth in this opening sequence is a signature concrete, sound, visual performance piece, a powerful gesture of pure breath or spirit built around the sounds "emerald" and "d[h]arma,"the "h"—as in French, a silent (and therefore absent) letter.

This book unfolds in lucid delight to reveal the relationship between "langwage n desire;" and teaches us to walk the talk of a language freed of its hierarchies: "feet don’t talk or dew they," the second of the book's two subtitles.