In No Chronology, Karen Fish’s third collection of poems, she investigates those moments when the boundary of everyday life merges with history, imagination, and art. Fish was trained as a visual artist, and this way of seeing is intrinsic to her approach to poetry. Fish’s reflections on art and life speak to our common experiences, and her power to illuminate the subtle complexities of the world around us lies in her keen and compassionate observations. These poems invite us to join her in looking both at and beyond ourselves. Throughout this collection, Fish seeks truths about memory and loss, shame and redemption. She faces uncomfortable questions arising from our individual and collective actions, asking whether we are complicit in extinctions of species and how we reduce the humanity of prisoners by tying their identity to their crime. But these poems are also about naming life’s particular joys: driving in spring, walking through the woods with dogs, or hearing a child speak through the mail slot. They offer a space to encounter lyrical meditation as an experience in and of itself.

Karen Fish is associate professor at Loyola University Maryland, where she was chair of writing from 2015 to 2019. Her poetry has appeared in such publications as Slate, Ploughshares, Denver Quarterly, American Poetry Review, DoubleTake, New Republic, Yale Review, New Yorker, Partisan Review, and Poetry, among others. She is the author of The Cedar Canoe and What Is Beyond Us.