Outside, Inside

de Michael Penny

Do we make the universe, or does it make us? In Outside, Inside, the author positions each of us at the centre of this mystery, but lightens this presumption with irony and word-play that is as entertaining as it is thought-provoking. The three hundred short, linked poems in this collection begin with a complaint about the unknowability of what's outside and what's inside, but then shift to an engagement with the very nature of this outside/inside dichotomy. Penny then explores the many ways the question arises for us: through travel, wind, rain, signs, ladders, landscape, the sun, the moon, even parrot feathers, and, of course, in how we use words and find meaning in them. Ultimately, the poems ask whether we construct what's outside, or whether what's outside constructs us.