4.0
Poems
ByPublisher Description
Prior to her stunning first novel, Fugitive Pieces, Anne Michaels had already won awards and critical acclaim for two books of poetry: The Weight of Oranges (1986), which won the Commonwealth Prize for the Americas, and Miner's Pond (1991), which received the Canadian Authors Association Award and was short-listed for the Governor General's Award and the Trillium Award. Although they were published separately, these two books, along with Skin Divers, a collection of Michaels's newest work, were written as companion volumes.
Poems brings all three books together for the first time, creating for American readers a wonderful introduction to Anne Michaels's poetry. Meditative and insightful, powerful and heart-moving, these are poems that, as Michael Ondaatje has written, "go way beyond games or fashion or politics . . . They represent the human being entire."
Poems brings all three books together for the first time, creating for American readers a wonderful introduction to Anne Michaels's poetry. Meditative and insightful, powerful and heart-moving, these are poems that, as Michael Ondaatje has written, "go way beyond games or fashion or politics . . . They represent the human being entire."
Download the free Fable app
Stay organized
Keep track of what you’re reading, what you’ve finished, and what’s next.
Build a better TBR
Swipe, skip, and save with our smart list-building tool
Rate and review
Share your take with other readers with half stars, emojis, and tags
Curate your feed
Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesStay organized
Keep track of what you’re reading, what you’ve finished, and what’s next.Build a better TBR
Swipe, skip, and save with our smart list-building toolRate and review
Share your take with other readers with half stars, emojis, and tagsCurate your feed
Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesPoems Reviews
4.0
honnari
Created 10 months agoShare
Report
“An omnibus of three separate collections written by Anne Michaels over the course of 15 years, this book of poems was an exceptional read! A lot of these poems remind me, stylistically, of Mary Oliver: the lyricism and imagery of the poems, which use nature as an avenue by which we can understand ourselves (and vice versa). Michaels writes a lot about love and its myriad of forms—platonic, romantic, parental, etc.—as it has shaped her life, and I loved getting to track the different registers of love through the evolution of these collections which were intended to speak to one another. For Michaels, love always seems to be punctuated by grief, tenderness outlined by the inevitability of loss and perhaps more precious for it—and also perhaps why winter has such prominence, more than other seasons, in her works. Skin Divers was probably my favorite collection out of the three.
Some favorites that made me feel insane:
- What the Light Reaches ["Prayer is the effort of wresting words/ not from silence,/ but from the noise of other words./ To penetrate heaven, we must reach/ what breaks in us."]
- Words for the Body ["You spoke of a kind of hunger/ that makes pleasure perfect./ Then you said how it was to be opened/ and tasted by a hall full of people."]
- The Weight of Oranges (the poem, not the whole collection though it was also very very good holistically) ["I hear your voice now—I know,/ everyone knows promises come from fear./ People don't live past each other,/ you're always here with me."]”
Ffion
Created about 3 years agoShare
Report
Vehka Kurjenmiekka
Created about 4 years agoShare
Report
“This book has been one of the best reading experiences of my life. Michaels just - uh, I can't really even describe it, but she just hits hard and cuts through everything and sometimes her poems are, well. Like this:
"There are nights in the forest of words
when I panic, every step into thicker darkness,
the only way out to write myself into a clearing,
which is silence.
Nights in the forest of words
when I'm afraid we won't hear each other
over clattering branches, over
both our voices calling.
In winter, in the hour
when the sun runs liquid then freezes,
caught in the mantilla of empty trees;
when my heart listens
through the cold stethoscope of fear,
your voice in my head reminds me
what the light teaches.
Slowly you translate fear into love,
the way the moon's blood is the sea."
//re-read on 11th of October, 2021: still the best book I've ever read.”
Raadelma
Created almost 5 years agoShare
Report
Jehan
Created almost 7 years agoShare
Report
About Anne Michaels
Anne Michaels is the author of the best-selling novel Fugitive Pieces, which was translated and published in more than two dozen countries and won several awards, including the 1997 Lannan Literary Award for Fiction and, in Britain, the Guardian Fiction Award and the Orange Prize. She lives in Toronto.
Other books by Anne Michaels
Start a Book Club
Start a public or private book club with this book on the Fable app today!FAQ
Do I have to buy the ebook to participate in a book club?
Why can’t I buy the ebook on the app?
How is Fable’s reader different from Kindle?
Do you sell physical books too?
Are book clubs free to join on Fable?
How do I start a book club with this book on Fable?
Books Similar to Poems
Save to a list
0
/30
0
/100
Private List