All We Saw

Fugitive Pieces is one of my favourite books, lyrical and moving it has such a poetic style that after reading it for the first time I immediately went and read the poetry collections; The Weight of Oranges and Miner's Pond. In this, her latest collection it is clear that Michaels has lost none of the poetic power that moved me all those years ago. This work is freighted with the effects of grief and love on a person. Most interestingly for me is the constant sense of movement in the work between the states. We see the chasms between emotional states. We see what happens when all the emotions pile up at once and we buckle under the weight. Everything in the poems is in flux, time, memory, feelings - and the words ride this movement with such raw grace and beauty I found myself in tears.