Laurence Carr

Paradise Loft Laurence Carr

Laurence Carr's Paradise Loft is a collection of poems that explores time. Paradise Loft is a collection that explores time. Countless writers have shown how time affects the characters within their narra- tives: Proust, perhaps at the centerpiece, with In Search of Lost Time, Virginia Woolf with The Waves and Orlando, and the over- looked but intriguing Lord Dunsany fantasy-romance, The King

of Elfland's Daughter. In Paradise Loft, poems are arranged into nine sections beginning with a prologue: "God's Diary/Day 5", a timeless timeframe. It is followed by "Wording/Morning", thoughts on morning writing; "Journeyman I", a sequence of time-travels; "Feline Dreams" on the afterlives of cats, ending with the mid-20th century romance, "The Ballad of Henrietta Pussycat and Her Lover Thief Coyote." Next, "Even She" are studies, much like an artist might keep in a sketchbook. The prose poems in "time past" bring up collected memories that have lingered long enough to record. "Journeyman II" continues the time-travels, and "Wording/Eve- ning" shows the end of day grasping at end of day thoughts. The book closes with "in time" seven bilingual dreamscapes conjure themselves between two and seven A. M. and bring on a new beginning.