As a poet, the mirror neuron is central to Pagel’s artistry. The collection’s title essay explores the mirror neuron, the neurons of empathy, which allow an observer or listener to viscerally experience what they are told “by feeling”, not thinking. Billed as a “radical retelling of loneliness,” I would argue Pagel excavates maps of our interconnected nature and proclivity to connect the seemingly unrelated in an attempt to understand human experience. Pagel’s collection of 10 braided essays tour the personal, the grotesque, the uncanny, and peculiar - a constant reminder of our attachment to the invisible. Like the energy of Utah’s terminal lake, these essays induce awe, revelation, oneness, and nothingness, often all at once, as Pagel confronts the paradox of life and death on round-about roads rising and falling through landscapes: Iowa City, Chicago, Copenhagen, Libertyville, Wisconsin, Prague, Salt Lake. The same could be said for the fragments encountered in Caryl Pagel’s Out of Nowhere into Nothing. A few hours pass and suddenly the freeway rises and falls at the base of Salt Lake it is the kind of abrupt sprawling encounter that takes your breath away.
For a moment, I wonder if the endless highway is actually a spiral. Entering Utah, Park City, feels just like the western Rockies dotted in evergreens and vibrant mountain living.
On the road and, for a few hours, 80 West still feels like Colorado, the front range blending with Wyoming’s Archean rock - deep green memory of great lakes guides cars and errant horses.
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