For some years now Brenda Coultas, in her narratives, has been conjuring worlds to which multiple qualities of the preceding description might apply. Whether in her book Early Films (Rodent Press 1996) or in her recent chapbook A Summer Newsreel (Second Story Books, 1999) Coultas is engaged in constructing usefully disjunctive, lyric-enhanced investigations into landscapes that have come apart. For me, part of the great thing about Coultas' writing is that she brings an indomitable hunger for beauty to bear on her cracked and spilling subjects.