Patrick Barney
Wed, 29 Apr 2026 13:45:57 PDT

In Memory of Days and Nights is a collection of meditative and lyric essays that are interconnected by their attention to relationships of dominance and subordination mediated by economic systems and language, personal complicity in such relationships, possible forms of revolt, and attempts to make meaning within these systems. The essays in this collection deal with these issues in several forms. The shorter form essays, utilizing a lyric voice concerned with imagery and rhythm as opposed to narrative, range from half a page to five pages long. These either examine personal experience in an effort to reflect upon death and meaninglessness or depict myth and historical occurrence to meditate upon the human desire for order. The longer essays in this collection range from traditional narrative-driven pieces, to collage and mosaic pieces--unfolding in the accumulated depictions of instances of time--to universal meditations burgeoning from individual experience. These navigate the intersections between the microcosm of the author's life and the macrocosm of human life, often by applying the thought-systems of various philosophers and writers to personal experience.