Song of the Taxidermist

There's something fresh and fantastic in Aurian Haller's view of the world. In Song of the Taxidermist, he demonstrates both a fascination and unease with the independence of the body — its resistance to the self's colonizing imperative.

Employing a powerful visual and intellectual imagination, a camera and a roving curiosity, he investigates the ways that flesh inhabits the spaces around us. Building upon the stories of famous taxidermied specimens — the celebrated French giraffe, Zarafe, and the Alaskan sled dog, Togo — he explores what it means when the shell of a being becomes iconic in a culture: how place, an idea, or a quality might fill a standing skin.

Like his compatriots Erin Mouré, Roo Borson, and Michael Ondaatje, Aurian Haller pushes beyond the constraints of the short lyric or narrative moment to experiment with larger thematic forms. This stunning new collection, so carefully executed in image and phrasing, so agile in its metaphors, is both astonishing in scope and lush in its imaginative landscape.