Bernard. Is there existential value in a name? Resoundingly, yes, yes, yes. As a quality of human perspective, the existence of a thing is symbolically denoted by a name. The name generates and abstract cognitive perpetuation resembling the names physical likeness. If one is determined to bolster the global lexicon, then neologism is the incontestable avenue for which any mind should wander down. 

     On to other things. Bernard Cooper's Maps to Anywhere, a collection of essays recounting events in his life explores the relationship he had with his parents as a child, and later as an adult. The first section Beacons Burning Down is a tribute to his mother, one in which he regales tales of his youth, and the constant dejection he felt towards his name, Bernard. He describes his name as "the connotations of myopia, introversion, and bookishness that my destiny has borne out." All the while he manages to string along a collection of stories ranging from a death defying headless rooster that his father comically represents in court, to a quixotic tale of his mother and grandparents swimming the Bering Strait (at its shortest point 51 miles across) to arrive in America, from Russia.

     The language Cooper uses ranges from a pithy colloquial evocation towards free verse that is at times writhing with heavy words. It may not be an easy read for all, keep a dictionary on hand, and partake in the journey. A journey laden with dread, "I can't possibly go about my business day in and day out, parting the curtain of space before me, with any greater sense of apocalypse than I already have." And yet a sense of mythical hope "For eight minutes and twenty-two seconds, those subaquatic octaves formed in my mind a conception of refuge so sweet, I felt as though I were living in Atlantis..." Exploring the vestiges of his memory before they are depleted.