I Imagined It Empty — Ruth Lauer Manenti. Published by RM/PHREE/Ediciones Posibles.
I see poetry and photography as sister arts. Both share a preoccupation with light and time, the fleeting moment and the resonant image. Both arts are better at suggesting than explaining, which is their limitation—as well as their strength. One can see this clearly in Ruth Lauer Manenti’s new book, I Imagined It Empty. As if in a dream, we float between her lyrical black-and-white images of her spare house, her self-portraits of housekeeping chores, and her moving and ethereal portraits of her mother’s last days on earth. In my mind’s eye, mother and daughter blur to suggest the artist at different stages of life. And what remains? A bare table, an open book, a window brimming with light—and, of course, poetry. “My life, / you were a door I was given / to walk through,” to quote Jane Hirshfield, Lauer Manenti’s sister poet.
Rebecca Norris Webb’s new book is A Difficulty Is a Light, her first hybrid poetry book that’s punctuated by 15 of her photographs, with an accompanying exhibition at the Alessia Paladini Gallery, Milan. She’s currently working on Badlands, an ongoing project in the Dakotas. When not traveling, Norris Webb shares her time between Park Slope, Brooklyn and Wellfleet, Cape Cod.