Then Go On

Then Go On is a collection of prose works in which the sentence serves as a navigational device for plotting a course through different registers of language and attention. Detail, speculation, and inquiry combine in mismatched scales and perspectives, held together by a slim insistence that one must make it to the end of the line. In Then Go On, Burger explores how the idioms of rational inquiry—science, philosophy, reportage—can be turned back on themselves in self-reflexive critiques of certainty. For Burger, the gestures and habits of thought can provide patterns for optimism, even when thought itself yields no clear path. Serial moments highlight gestures of thinking and imagination without ever yielding to the fluidity of an ideal form; the obligatory shape of the sentence creates imperfect containers for matters that don’t fit there.

Mary Burger is a writer and multidisciplinary artist based in Oakland, California. She writes poetry and personal narratives that explore ways of knowing and being in relation. Books include Sonny (Leon Works, 2005) and A Partial Handbook for Navigators (Interbirth Books, 2008). In her art practice she uses painting, fiber arts, and mixed media, working with geometric and biomorphic forms to trace synaesthetic thinking.