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A Map Predetermined and Chance (National Poetry Series) Paperback – November 8, 2011
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Identified, pressed, touched repeatedly or restlessly,’ pleasured, hankered after, pointed at with the finger. Laura Wetherington means everything, all of everything. The map is not the territory,’ said Alfred Korzybski. Perhaps Wetherington’s map is the territory. All I want is universe,’ she winks."C.S. Giscombe, National Poetry Series judge
From You Slip Through My Fingers”:
This is a verb: your fingers.
This is a noun: my
desire. They make
a sentence: you finger
my desire.
Strong, cathartic language on subjects ranging as wide as orgasm as deep as music, as timely as place, these debut poems speak clearly to history both personal and liberatory.
Laura Wetherington, a Virginia native, teaches creative writing at Eastern Michigan University. She co-founded and co-edits Textsound, an online journal of experimental poetry and sound.
- Print length80 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherFence Books
- Publication dateNovember 8, 2011
- Dimensions6 x 0.3 x 7.8 inches
- ISBN-101934200492
- ISBN-13978-1934200490
The chilling story of the abduction of two teenagers, their escape, and the dark secrets that, years later, bring them back to the scene of the crime. | Learn more
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"This book of poems is also a dare. Can you be an operator of language and still let yourself get as close to the truth as possible? Can you survive it? Can you live with how temporary it all is?" -The Poetry Project Newsletter
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Fence Books; First Edition (November 8, 2011)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 80 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1934200492
- ISBN-13 : 978-1934200490
- Item Weight : 4.5 ounces
- Dimensions : 6 x 0.3 x 7.8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #7,008,093 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #24,116 in Poetry by Women
- #37,293 in American Poetry (Books)
- #53,218 in Poetry Themes & Styles (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Laura Wetherington’s first book, A Map Predetermined and Chance (Fence Books 2011), was selected by C.S. Giscombe for the National Poetry Series. The Brooklyn Rail called the book “humble, folksy, romantic, tough, inventive, and not over-programmed.” Her second book, chosen by Peter Gizzi for the New Measure Prize, was released with Free Verse Editions in January 2021. She has published three chapbooks: Dick Erasures (Red Ceilings Press 2011), the collaboratively written at the intersection of 3 (Dancing Girl Press 2014), and Grief Is the Only Thing That Flies (Bateau Press 2018), which Arielle Greenberg selected for the Keel Chapbook Contest. Her poem “No one wants to be the victim no one when there is a gun involved and blue” was adapted as an artist book by Inge Bruggeman.
Her poetry appears in Narrative, Michigan Quarterly Review, Colorado Review, FENCE, VOLT, Anomaly (Drunken Boat), among others, and in three anthologies: Choice Words: Writers on Abortion (Haymarket Books 2020), The Sonnets: Translating and Rewriting Shakespeare (Nightboat Books 2012), and 60 Morning Talks (Ugly Duckling Presse 2014). Her essays and book reviews have appeared in The Volta, Hyperallergic, Full Stop, Jacket2, and 1508.
Laura co-founded and, for a decade, co-edited textsound.org: an online journal of experimental poetry and sound. Poets & Writers named textsound an “indie innovator,” one of a small group of “groundbreaking presses and magazines that are redrawing the publishing map.” She developed an integrated curriculum for graduate and undergraduate students working on the Sierra Nevada Review and for four years taught those classes. In 2014 she joined Baobab Press as their poetry editor.
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- Reviewed in the United States on December 8, 2011Laura creates a clever, funny view of life in her book A Map Predetermined and Chance. I especially liked the final chapter, Visiting Normandy. A very interesting, humorous read.


