Omitting All That Is Usually Said - by Robin Caton (Paperback)

About the Book

"In Omitting All That is Usually Said, Robin Caton explores the nature of light, form, language, meaning, and thought, alongside the complexity of their interwoven relationships. Caton interrogates the workings of the human mind and explores the way we integrate disparate perceptions. Caton questions whether we can be certain that things really exist and that all we experience isn't simply a play of light and shadow. She considers how we live with all the limitations and emotional turmoil imbedded in humanity, while also maintaining a sense of something we call perfection. The poems of Omitting All That is Usually Said investigate how we might capture the depths of conflicting experiences and lived knowledge in ways that we can comprehend, and they marvel at how we find delight in all of it"--

Book Synopsis

Poems that consider the complexities of human life and the ways that we perceive reality.

In Omitting All That is Usually Said, Robin Caton explores the nature of light, form, language, meaning, and thought, alongside the complexity of their interwoven relationships. Caton interrogates the workings of the human mind and explores the way we integrate disparate perceptions. Caton questions whether we can be certain that things really exist and that all we experience isn't simply a play of light and shadow. She considers how we live with all the limitations and emotional turmoil imbedded in humanity, while also maintaining a sense of something we call perfection. The poems of Omitting All That is Usually Said investigate how we might capture the depths of conflicting experiences and lived knowledge in ways that we can comprehend, and they marvel at how we find delight in all of it.

Review Quotes

"Omitting All That Is Usually Said floats in space and time, through thought and action, leaving in its wake so many beautifully structured turns toward what is unavailable to most of us, so much of perception and consciousness, which is to say, most of life itself. That this omission becomes so embodied in this work is its engagement with the awe of presence, of being. An exploratory lyric runs up against a traditional narrative of a lonely man on a train seeking love and connection, landscape becomes lyric, story becomes spirit, and book becomes originary, once again a place where we can experience the difficulty, even the beauty, of becoming."--Gillian Conoley, author of "Notes from the Passenger"

"In this 'womb of words, ' Caton gives the reader the just-born joy of the day, along with its quotidian continuity. The sadness of failed but persistent love is an underlying refrain. There is a musicality in Caton's words as she questions consciousness ('I am the name for things') and being ('We walk in / the wind through everyday / terms, matter as sound . . .'). Narratives appear and disappear in the juxtaposed poetry and prose and in the broken words of collages that serve as a visual counterpoint to the text. An eternal, but always-ending, spring is invoked. This 'linguistic paradise' presents the beauty of the world in all its poignant transitory glory. Omitting All That is Usually Said does just that, while somehow managing to say everything."--Laura Moriarty, author of "Personal Volcano"

"In Omitting All That is Usually Said, Caton, recreates the anatomy of perception, with its 'folly of love' as language, narrating passages of consciousness where 'light is a gaze' that opens out into a world of metaphoric rhythms. Through a series of dynamic interactions, torn detours and sequences, and 'lateral fictions' between an omniscient observer, a protagonist on a train, and windows that carry the 'intimate air' of landscapes, Caton demonstrates a painter's ability to create a 'lucid invention' you'll want to read again and again. Imagine a story, en media res, full of subtext and vision play--archives of indefinite time made for our 'starved minds' like 'insects . . . in stuttering debate.' This magical collection invites Mallarmé's declaration that 'Every soul is a melody to be renewed.'"--Elena Karina Byrne, author of "If This Makes You Nervous"

About the Author

Robin Caton is the author of The Color of Dusk. Her poems have appeared in various journals including Generator, Columbia Poetry Review, and 6ix, and her short story "B, Longing" is included in the fabulist fiction collection, Paraspheres. Caton is a senior instructor at Dharma College in Berkeley, and she lives in Walnut Creek, California.