Boxing the Compass

Sandy Florian's novella, Boxing the Compass, begins with kinds of unfolding, a sort of anti-origami of intention and desire: like love letters or lovers' bodies, exposing and withholding simultaneously. Any reader who opens herself, himself to this book is risking a special kind of pleasure. But the presiding engagement is not pleasure itself, but experience of unfolding, which can also be violent—an earthquake is a cosmic origami, and an accurate account of the mind awakening in this book.   Poet Sandy Florian was born in New York to parents of Colombian and Puerto Rican heritage and raised in Latin America. She earned an MFA from Brown University and a PhD from the University of Denver. Her collections include the novella Boxing the Compass (2013), which launched the Akrilica series, a collaboration between Noemi Press and Letras Latinas; On Wonderland & Waste (2010); Prelude to Air from Water (2010); The Tree of No (2008); Telescope (2006); and the chapbook 32 Pedals & 47 Stops (2007). Her criticism appears widely, and she serves on the editorial board of Eventual Aesthetics. Florian produces an experimental movie series, Nameless Films, with Talan Memmott. Her many honors and awards include residencies at Caldera Arts and the Vermont Studio Center and awards from Elixir Press, New Voices, and Brown University. She has taught at West Virginia University.   "Sandy Florian's gorgeous meditation, Boxing the Compass, begins with kinds of unfolding, a sort of anti-origami of intention and desire: like love letters or lovers' bodies, exposing and withholding simultaneously. Any reader who opens herself, himself to this book is risking a special kind of pleasure. But the presiding engagement is not pleasure itself, but experience of unfolding, which can also be violent—an earthquake is a cosmic origami, and an accurate account of the mind awakening in this extraordinary book." - Bin Ramke "This novella of compressed, accreting, hungry paragraphs is full of sparkling diction and pinching rhythms; mysteriously, it silhouettes its interlocking motifs. Geography, family sadness, facts about the Old and New Worlds come into play. A real pleasure of a book." - Stacey Levine