Paper Radio

This is a fractured memoir, steeped in the language and images Rogers was raised on: Kipling’s Just So Stories, Dorothy Parker quips, song lyrics, Beat diatribes, the visual gymnastics of cummings, Victorian children’s stories, fairy tales, and the crumbling beauty and very real danger of downtown Detroit.

Rogers’ writing is closely related to the lyrical tradition, though she’s also interested in narrative, mystery, memory, and the possibilities for language to create an emotional effect on a reader. Rogers is drawn to the nature of utopian impulses — from nineteenth century spiritual movements to 1960s radicalism to our hopes for Obama — and the ways these impulses break down.

Research subjects include: The Shakers, John Sinclair, the MC5, communes, hippie cookbooks, shamanism, Surrealism, Detroit and Joseph Cornell.