Further Adventures

Both a prequel and a sequel to the earlier From the Files of the Immanent Foundation and In a Broken Star, this new volume of poems is Finkelstein at his most uncanny. A dark, fragmented narrative weirdly illuminated by sudden bursts of lyricism, Further Adventures is a philosophical quest-romance that draws equally from the tradition of visionary poetry and from modern pop culture. At its heart is Pascal Wanderlust, first introduced in Broken Star, who, as Mark Scroggins puts it "traverses waste lands recalling those of Eliot, Browning, and Lovecraft, swims and flies through libraries of Alexandria and Babel, and receives tantalizing hints of destinations in colloquies with specters from beneath the sea, from eldritch dimensions and 'faery lands forlorn.'" A reluctant knight-errant who would rather "sit quietly in a room alone," the young Pascal is charged with the task of restoring the mysterious Immanent Foundation, where "The horns of Elfland and the summons / of the shofar echo throughout the grounds. / Myth calls to counter-myth, song suggests / song, fallen forms rise again..."