Poetry. African American studies. Postulating a new age of iron with these highly wrought lines, Renee Gladman questions how we experience our life and times, what is real and what is fantasy. She combines elements of narrative with an attention towords and letters that reminds us how much her usual practice of fiction is informed by her sense of poetry. Like wrought iron itself these graceful, unpredictable patterns stand out against the stark day. the vivid/ black /unseeing Here a landscape is created and taken apart.