The Reproduction of Profiles

Do Wittgenstein and water mix? Philosophy and the facts of everyday life? The remarkable prose poems in Rosmarie Waldrop’s The Reproduction of Profiles prove that startling new insights are possible when philosophical formulations are turned on their heads. The poet comments “I used Wittgenstein’s phrases in a free, unsystematic way, sometimes quoting, sometimes letting them spark what they would, sometimes substituting different nouns within a phrase (e g., his famous anti-metaphysical statement that ’the deepest questions are no questions at all’ becomes ’You could prove to me that the deepest rivers are, in fact, no rivers at all’).”