Do Wittgenstein and water mix? Philosophy and the facts of everyday life? The remarkable prose poems in Rosmarie Waldrop’s <em>The Reproduction of Profiles</em> 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’).”

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