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Skin Divers
 
 
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Skin Divers [Hardcover]

Anne Michaels (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 67 pages
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC; First Edition, First Impression edition (27 Sep 1999)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0747544530
  • ISBN-13: 978-0747544531
  • Product Dimensions: 20.2 x 14 x 1.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 427,715 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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More About the Author

Anne Michaels
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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

There is something mesmerising and unattainable at once about Skin Divers, Anne Michaels' first poetry collection since the astounding success of her novel, Fugitive Pieces in 1997. It is as beautiful and engaging as "the dark unlocking", the way she describes the photograph the lovers take of night waves in the last poem. The concerns of love and loss recur in this volume as she brings "the chemistry of looking" to human passion. Michaels moves gracefully between the exact drawing of an image, "Frozen sparklers of Queen Anne's lace", which has painterly precision, to a more diagrammatic approach, as scientific as a clutch of model atoms, "A jagged tube of ions pins us to the sky". She keenly explores the point where atomism and animism meet, exquisitely caught in "Fontanelles" as she waits for dark, "impossible to record", the moment day becomes night or embryo becomes foetus. Darkness is a dominant theme and yet for Michaels, "love's dark field" is restorative rather than gloomy. One character's voice is "more distinct in darkness", while another sees renewal in the night: "The same loneliness that closes us / opens us again. Like hair loosened by the sea, / slowly the darkness opens into darkness."

Michaels reminds us that we live in darkness as much as in light and "dark with hope" is a powerful and refreshing repositioning of metaphor. The irreducibility of love is well observed in "Into Arrival", where two lovers are reunited and "when he finds her / there is room at last / for everyone they love" and their love, because it is broken from love is "like thesea/from the sea". "Last Night's Moon" allows her paradoxical genius full rein, from the setting up of the rhythm of the "Unbroken/ broken sea", tothe hands which manipulate "in the darkness, silver bromide / of desire darkening skin with light." The words "If love wants you" are repeated like a caveat, until she strikes with "If love wants you, suddenly your past / is obsolete science". It is no surprise that Michaels was drawn to scientist Marie Curie and her "glowing distillation of time" as a persona for a later poem in the book. This is a wonderful journey into love's fantastic work and the body's material comprehension of it. --Cherry Smyth

Product Description

From the author of "Fugitive Pieces", this work provides a collection of poems, meditations on how love changes in order to survive and how we move from 'obsolete science' to new perceptions.

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Anne Michaels is a unique and very particular author. Her novels are imbued with her poetic skills and these can best be observed in this magnificent collection. Her imagery and the way she evokes emotional states are special to her. In the title poem, she evokes the moon as a sensual but well-loved female "...stepping from her clothes, strewn silk glinting in furrows..." and"Tonight the moon traipses in bare feet, silk stockings left behind like pieces of river". Then there is her recurring theme of destruction - both of landscapes and of peoples. In "There is no city that does not dream" Michaels is following the theme of her recent novel "The Winter Vault" where man destroys to create - a human Shiva.
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