Geographies of Pluto
Abstract
Geographies of Pluto is a collection of fourteen essays that consider the relationship between individual consciousness and the cosmological universe. The immediate setting is West Virginia, but an inward, emotional landscape dominates the collection, a vista colored by mental illness and sexual abuse. Celestial landscapes provide a corollary for this subjective, personal world; Earth's moon, Pluto, the Cronian moon Enceladus, and Venus feature prominently. Individual essays juxtapose disparate subjects---for example, suicide and the dwarf planet Pluto---to create a more complete emotional portrait of the author's experiences. The collection also utilizes a recursive structure wherein subjects reoccur, often with altered emotional resonances.