Souvenir de Constantinople is a seductively paced travelogue—both exotic and erotic—where traveler is lover and tourist, materialist and pilgrim, voyeur and poseur and where the self is bartered in exchange for a glimpse of otherness—couplets of coupling neither arriving nor staying put—no home, no self—just the consumption of “Turkish Delight,” a fantasy of imperialist candy and a lover’s pet-name—Words are visited as sites of otherness—translations of absent bodies—mystagogic etymological geomancy—the impossible quest for self and other was never so luxurious—the letter home never more admirably addressed. —Martin Corless-Smith

Elliptical eloquence is Donna Stonecipher’s hallmark as a poet, and in Souvenir de Constantinople, at once a lover’s and a traveler’s tale, she is as interested in the white space of what cannot be said as in the march of her (often exquisitely phrased) lines across the page. A story emerges—for this is as much a novel in verse as a collection—but its riddling mystery remains, which is satisfyingly true to the nature of both travel and love. I found the book mesmeric. —Jonathan Raban