In Defense of Puppets

An urgent question drives this book: what is it to speak for another? Technology today often makes us feel as if we can speak for or as another. But this is an illusion. It is crucial that we remain seriously and playfully alert to the active role our imaginings have in the shaping of what we think we know of ourselves and others. Poetry is vital to raising this awareness. "Art is puppet-like," the poet Paul Celan observed. This collection of poems, some in formal, some in free verse, explores the ironies, humor, emotions, and visions produced by such multifaceted puppetry, its pleasures and dangers, its role in both grief and joy, in experience and recollection.