Material Witness

By: Aditi Machado

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Paperback | 29 January 2025

At a Glance

Paperback
80 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.27

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A series of meditative long poems that ritualize perception as a way of maintaining kinship with the non-human world.

In Material Witness, the poet as human subject keeps vigil over the material world as the quotidian unfolds. The line between observer and observed blurs as non-human agency reveals itself, its own kind of witnessing. In her long poem “Concerning Matters Culinary” inspired by the first Latin cookbook, Machado activates the living matter of gustatory life with wry humor and subtle critique. Encouraging us to eschew nostalgia for deep presence, Machado’s poems remind us that “experience is phenomenal in its segues.”

Industry Reviews

"'Wordplay' isn't quite the term for what's going on here; it's more like linguistic athleticism. If you always choose Scrabble over Risk, crosswords over sudoku, you'll get so much pleasure from the rhymes and slant rhymes ('The body is pronounced bawdy;' 'It's like innocence way off / in the distance'), double and triple meanings, conjugations and declensions, repetitions that evoke a sense of deja vu." -Elisa Gabbert, The New York Times

"Dear Aditi, I did receive 'Route Marienbad.' Read it. Had the feeling I was discovering a real poet. A wonderful feeling. I hope you keep this 'innocence,' this directness, this genuineness. Bonne chance." -Etel Adnan

"To attempt to deconstruct these poems would be to blow them apart. They are utterly contemporary. They are deeply intimate. They are the lashes of a forest of thought." -Mary Jo Bang

"If John Ashbery's Some Trees marked a new beginning for modern American poetry, Aditi Machado's Some Beheadings renovates the poetics of indeterminacy for our transnational continuous present." -Srikanth Reddy

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