A Precise Chaos

A life-long commitment to social evolution - and, occasionally, revolution - animates the poems in Jo-Ann Mort's debut collection, A Precise Chaos. Moving from Mostar to Oaxaca, Paris to Taoromina, Mort's peripatetic poems reflect her experiences as a trade union activist, a political organizer, and a peace activist in the Middle East. Refusing to evade the hard questions called for by a life honestly examined, she asks: "We, who are so righteous./Where does it lead us?" By publishing her first collection in her sixties, Mort succeeds in distilling a wealth of experience into something like wisdom: "The men were larger than life/starting revolutions in their heads and in their classrooms...//The men were larger than life, /so life eluded them."