Dusie Chapbook Kollectiv Series, 2007

"‘Not to confine the page to the certainty of certain place, but to haul it alas through transitions successful or non, through transit' —Jennifer Scappettone, from Beauty [Is the New Absurdity]

"Vast territories, however we define them, are undeniably being navigated, and their languages translated. Scappettone’s line suggests meaning is restless, is in perpetual ‘transit’ even as the words that carry it stay stubbornly stationary. Part of the appeal of writing poetry is the challenge of locating something, usually temporal in nature, then holding it still on a page (or its words, anyway) which makes the chapbook — a lighter, more ephemeral cousin of the book — especially suitable to contain moment and what is momentary. I like Scappettone’s quote, too, because it speaks to the difficulties of delivery as well as containment. ‘To haul it alas through transitions successful or non’ acknowledges that we are forever ferrying words that do not always arrive at our expected destinations."                      —Nicole Mauro, for Jacket