Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. CONTENTS v
3. Island Zombie 1
4. Pooling Waters
5. Making Being Here Enough 11
6. Sometimes Dead 13
7. The Cold Blood of Iceland 15
8. Bluff and Psycho 17
9. How—Is Visible Here 19
10. Floating in the Desert 23
11. Accidents Are Mundane 25
12. Roads Lack Dedication 27
13. Little Showers 29
14. Falling Trees Make Sound 31
15. Verne’s Journey 33
16. The Probability of Round Rocks 35
17. Special Effects 37
18. Lóa and Lóa 39
19. Weather Is National Sport 41
20. Anatomy and Geography 43
21. Indoor Water 45
22. Pronouns Detain Me 47
23. Bluff Life 49
24. A Newark Here 53
25. Island and Labyrinth 55
26. Where the Earth Is Hot 57
27. Youth and Geometry 59
28. Sleep: Rotation Method 63
29. When Dickinson Shut Her Eyes 65
30. Pastoral and Cave 67
31. The Flats (After William Morris) 69
32. Crossing a Field I Remember 71
33. I Can’t See the Arctic Circle from Here 73
34. A Franchise of Rainbows 75
35. Wallace Stevens’s Ice 77
36. Collected
37. Hot Water Sampler 85
38. An Adhesive Feeling 89
39. A Mink Look 91
40. Mirror, Desert and Mirror 93
41. Monroe, Iceland 97
42. Throwing Itself Together 99
43. Something Shimmering 101
44. An Evening with Gelatinous and Glutinous 103
45. Cloth-Home Culture 105
46. The Other Here 107
47. Water and Clearing (Excerpt) 109
48. Conjecture a Cause: Seljavegur 2, Reykjavík 101, August 22, 2003 111
49. Notes on the Obsolescence of Islands 115
50. Eruption, Assassination (November 1963) 119
51. A White Stone 121
52. My Oz
53. Keynote Speech, Class of 2006 Iceland Academy of the Arts, Reykjavík 125
54. Weather Reports You
55. Introduction 135
56. Selection: 21 Reports 137
57. Morgunblaðið Newspaper
58. Note on Texts 180
59. The Nothing That Is 181
60. Notes on Icelandic Architecture (Excerpt) 187
61. One Hundred Waterfalls, Five Hundred Jobs 189
62. Iceland’s Difference 195
63. Colophon 246