The Soft Signature is a place where multiple meanings are generated and evoked through the disruption of simple linear narrative and lyric sensibility. For Lise Downe, language is not simply a means to an end.‘ Instead, its instability and unpredictability are encouraged and given a free hand: the effect is the creation of a nowhere,’ or alternate reality, that is as Canadian as Canada itself. In breathtaking poems like Arranged Tributaries,‘ Downe proves herself the consummate literary scientist: the imagination’s cartographer, geologist, meteorologist, and historian. Ultimately, The Soft Signature documents a natural history of culture and communication, momentarily stabilizing the perpetually shifting sands upon which all such institutions are built.