What is breath for? What is archive? Why write a poem, instead of... something else?
Theophylline is a work of poetry motivated by asthma, seeking poetry’s futurity in a queer and female heritage. Moure crosses a border to engage the poetry of three American modernists—Muriel Rukeyser, Elizabeth Bishop, and Angelina Weld Grimké—as a translator might enter work to translate it. But what if that work is already in English?
I looked for women who had made and were formed by
migrations, and who were in some way marked ‘qustionably’
by the socius, and I examined what I could of the forms and
shapes of their migrations—
"
In Theophylline, the poet’s interaction with Rukeyser, Bishop, and Grimké is itself a translation ... Moure works to sensitively resuscitate erased histories.
" - Poetry Foundation
"
Generous in its generation of shared meaning and multiple voices … Theophylline breathes on and through each turning page, as it migrates across multiple thresholds. As [Moure] fits herself into the shoes of others and otherness, she walks the walk and talks the talk of postmodern poetry and translation.”
" - Miramichi Reader
"
A triumphant work of essai-poetry … Moure’s theorized queer poetics of disability is convincing and compelling, and the studied elements of translation and fragmentation elevate the book to a unique project.
" - Montreal Review of Books
