White·out: n. a surface condition . . . in which no object casts a shadow, the horizon cannot be seen, and only dark objects are discernible . . . Whiteout: when the heavy weather of daily life establishes the measure of the measureless; when the predatory nature of the accidental conjures cowboys and the comatose; when the sickly sweet pop of life underfoot contrasts the televised image, shrinking to a pinprick. Whiteout: calques and towers, twin polar storms, falling, burning. Whiteout: "a book of white nothing." George Murray's sixth collection has been a decade in the making. At once taut, tender and terrifying, haunted and haunting, Whiteout shatters convention in the collision of order and rage, formlessness and hard-won serenity.
