Structure of the Embryonic Rat Brain

Poetry. Christopher Janke stops at nothing, not even the end of a line of verse, in the expression of foment. These meditiations, set up on the synapses of a rat in embryo under knife, achieve potency through their own expression of nerve. Disjunctive and epistemic, the poems consider consciousness and demonstrate its wide, inchoate eye. By turns ferocious and goofy in the service of their largest aims, these lines describe and evidence the springing of the animal mind into being. "Janke is one of a very small hanfdul of younger poets whose work manages to be both technically striking and humanly moving--there is always something miraculous about this combination, but these days it's especially heartening. I've been wishing his work would receive more attention, and I am glad to see that happening now"--Franz Wright.

Christopher Janke stops at nothing, not even the end of a line of verse, in the expression of forment. These meditations, set upon the synapses of a rat in embryo under knife, achieve potency through their own expression of nerve. Disjunctive and epistemic, the poems consider consciousness and demonstrate its wide, inchoate eye.

By turns ferocious and goofy in the service of their largest aims, these lines describe and evidence the springing of the animal mind into being.