“...They will not
let go, not all the long way,
his arm in the curve
of her longing...”
Anne Michaels's short lyrics, like the longer monologues based on the lives of historical figures, explore an inner world fluid with feeling and memory. They reveal complex climates of emotion and sentiment, yet remain unsparing and unsentimental. As in the best poetry of our time, the luminous calm at the heart of her vision also registers the pressure of the darkness in our lives that has been momentarily withstood. These powerful poems, tense with desire and 'divided longings' remind us that Anne Michaels is among the most original poets of her generation.
Praise for Skin Divers:
"Skin Divers is a series of meditations on the intensity of love and has an intimacy at times so tender it hurts ... Love is profoundly explored." - The Times
"'We ask the poet to shepherd us telescopically and microscopically through many perspectives, to lead us ... through the hidden multidimensionality of almost everything.' Michaels, I think as I ponder these words, does exactly this, and does it so smoothly, so eloquently, that it seems deceptively easy." - Canadian Review of Books
"Where will the reader find the weather and texture of the inner life given such vivid, exact articulation? Reading Skin Divers, you know that its language has been listening for a very long time." - Don McKay
" Michaels is a marvellous poet, a beautiful word-weaver, who combines intellect with lived insight." - Daily News
Skin Divers was adapted in 2009 for the National Ballet of Canada by Dominique Dumais with music by Gavin Bryars. Incorporating spoken word and visual projections, Skin Divers explores “the body as a living archive of experience, or a museum of memory.”