"Am I inside the poem?" asks Monk, narrator of Nakell's new novel. Each and every gesture, every advance this questing Monk makes, involves itself in a grammar of growing awareness. Monk's achievements may seem inconsequential to a reader outside 12th c. Asian monasteries and retreats Monk wanders amongst, yet through the performances and interactivities of their inhabitants, their subjected-to status emerges as an embodiment of clearer subjectivity. Monk symbolizes commitment to a world shorn of its responsibilities by a commanding objectivity where certainty may by itself assert the final lone question: "Had I become so sick as I had become in order to nurture the idea of healing?"
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