The Hotel Eden

In the spirit of a flaneur, the poet goes about her daily life in and around Paris, with an eye for the diversity of human experience in a great city.

'Madame Martin will throw back her shutters at eight...' With these words Beverley Bie Brahic opens The Hotel Eden, a book about seeing the world. She moves through – Paris, the French provinces, the American west coast – in the spirit of a flaneur, going about her daily life alert to the variety and mystery of human experience: the soup kitchens, the Luxembourg Gardens and the Latin Quarter, the refugees, works of art and areas of damage. The title poem pays a debt to Joseph Cornell, the master of the assemblage, whose 'The Hotel Eden' discloses a stuffed parrot and other objects under glass. The eye – the poem – assembles them but cannot tell their intended story. It tells a story all the same. 'On the tip of God’s tongue, the bird waits to be named.' This is a book of revelatory indirections, of unexpected moons, creatures, passions, rituals and histories, of days rich in disclosures and in hints of revelation.