Outer-Body Travel

The traveler about to venture beyond the edge of the sky on the cover is a clue to what awaits the reader of Kathleen Ellis' Outer-Body Travel. In this vibrant collection, Ellis pays homage to an early planetarium visit, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Capt. Albert Stevens who proved the earth is curved, Apollo 17 photos, black holes, Eve and Lucy of fossil fame, swimming pools via David Hockney, Tai Chi, and more. Yet, the poems in Ellis' latest collection are not so much about outer space or out-of-body travel as the search for how we know what we know about the body and beyond. As former Maine poet laureate Betsy Sholl says, "the poems always return to earth, to 'the breath you live in.'"