Inverse Sky

Part Baudelairian flaneur, an Arcadian shepherd, the speaker in John Isles's brave new "Inverse Sky" encounters a fragmented history. It is nineteenth-century California, and the missions are still burning after the Americans establish the Bear Flag Republic; it is the twenty-first century, and the miners of 49 are relegated to a mural in an arcade. Both a loner and a lover, Isles's pilgrim-poet takes us on a journey where Native Americans are "missing persons" outside a diorama of their ancestors, then sets us adrift in settings ranging from film noir to the clear-cut hills of modern-day California landscapes, under siege but not defeated.