Fantastic Metropolis

In Maria Dermoot’s The Ten Thousand Things, a living sea snail in a box guards memories in the shapes of small, disparate objects. When the snail dies it is replace—a spiritual manipulation that is also an act of magic. Resurgent, the memories continue to inform the world with a playful, essential and erotic mystery. Writes Borges:

In my soul the afternoon grows wider and I reflect.

—Dream Tigers

And Kubler:

The shapes of time are the prey we want to capture.

—The Shape of Time

Bibliography

Gaston Bachelard, ??The Poetics of Space, Beacon Press, Boston,1969.
—, The Poetics of Revery, Beacon Press, Boston,1969.

Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Modern Library, New York, 1983.
—, Dream Tigers, University of Texas Press, Austin,1989.
—, Seven Nights, New Directions, New York, 1984.

Italo Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millenium, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1988.
—, Cosmicomics, Harcourt Brace, Orlando, 1968.

Johan Huiling, Homo Ludens, Beacon Press, Boston, 1955.

Ovid, The Metamorphoses, Penguin, Middlesex, 1986.

F.M.R. no. 1. Edited by Franco Maria Ricci. Franco Maria Ricci, New York, 1984.

Giovanni Mariotti, Le Bestiaire d’Aloys Zötl, chêne, F. M. Ricci, Paris, 1979.

Dreaming Paradise, Martial and Snoeck, Rotterdam, 1996.

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“The Deep Zoo” appears in Conjunctions 38: Rejoicing Revoicing.

Rikki Ducornet is the author of several novels, including The Jade Cabinet, The Fan-Maker’s Inquisition, Phosphor in Dreamland, and Gazelle. Author of two short story collections, The Complete Butcher’s Tales and The Word “Desire”, she has also illustrated books for Robert Coover and Jorge Luis Borges. Her work has been translated into seven languages, and in 2004 she received a Lannan award for her body of fiction.