Summary

In “Lake Michigan Merges into the Bay of Valparaiso, Chile,” Borzutsky concretely grounds his poetic repetitions of mutilation in two specific locales: “it is often said on the shores of Lake Michigan, which is the / Bay of Valparaiso, that we will die for reasons we do not / understand” (74). While Chicago has emerged in the book as the center toward which the speaker’s apocalyptic vision gravitates, here Borzutsky adds a further twist by aqueously merging the American city with a Chilean city. Aside from proper nouns, the poem is written entirely in undercase letters, and takes its perspective from the vantage point of a collective oppressed “we”: “we do not understand why we do not understand why we are / paid or beaten or loved” (74). The “I” which designates the speaker’s overdeveloped poetic consciousness is submerged in this poem, which concludes by repeating...