Micrographia

Eight years after her revelatory first book, Emily Wilson deepens her focus and extends her vision in new poems of striking intelligence and originality. Venturing into landscapes both interior and exterior, Micrographia explores what Wilson calls "the complex rigged wildness" of geographical, emotional, and verbal states, a territory located "somewhere in that / enjambment within / a cave within the brain." Following in the tradition of such poets as Dickinson, Bishop, and Ammons, Wilson's work regards the mind as "enmeshed" with the natural world, always "at the hinge of going over." Her way of speaking is as precisely calibrated and as restless as her way of seeing, and the terrain of Micrographia rises from a rich and unpredictable encounter with poetic language and form. At the same time, the voice of these poems is never less than urgent, "coming clear by the foment / moving through it." Wilson's eye travels the troubled boundaries between visible and invisible worlds, ranging from coastal Nova Scotia to the Andean highlands to Brooklyn's industrial Gowanus Canal to the poet's own backyard. Steeped in tradition but spoken in tones that are utterly distinctive, these intricate poems enter into the microscopic, micrographic spaces between words and things, between thinking and being.

Eight years after her revelatory first book, Emily Wilson deepens her focus and extends her vision in new poems of striking intelligence and originality. Venturing into landscapes both interior and exterior, Micrographia explores what Wilson calls "the complex rigged wildness" of geographical, emotional, and verbal states, a territory located "somewhere in that / enjambment within / a cave within the brain." Following in the tradition of such poets as Dickinson, Bishop, and Ammons, Wilson's work regards the mind as "enmeshed" with the natural world, always "at the hinge of going over." Her way of speaking is as precisely calibrated and as restless as her way of seeing, and the terrain of Micrographia rises from a rich and unpredictable encounter with poetic language and form. At the same time, the voice of these poems is never less than urgent, "coming clear by the foment / moving through it."

Wilson's eye travels the troubled boundaries between visible and invisible worlds, ranging from coastal Nova Scotia to the Andean highlands to Brooklyn's industrial Gowanus Canal to the poet's own backyard. Steeped in tradition but spoken in tones that are utterly distinctive, these intricate poems enter into the microscopic, micrographic spaces between words and things, between thinking and being.

Contents......Page 8 Fugitive......Page 12 Morpho Terrestre......Page 13 Interior......Page 14 Small Study......Page 15 Endemic......Page 16 Camperdown Elm......Page 17 Monadnock......Page 18 Motif......Page 19 Little Gothic......Page 20 Event......Page 21 Sunset: Rouen?......Page 22 Growth and Form......Page 23 Stereotype......Page 24 Prospect......Page 25 Blue Hill......Page 28 Johnny Rotten’s Produce......Page 38 Picturesque......Page 30 Little Discourse......Page 31 Spring Intensive......Page 32 Tableau......Page 33 Coal Age......Page 34 Monoprint......Page 35 Round the Mountain......Page 36 Zoetrope......Page 37 Watercolor with Scraping-Out......Page 39 Notchland......Page 40 Micrographia......Page 44 The Yew......Page 45 Pleasant Hill......Page 46 Protea......Page 47 Gray and Greens......Page 48 Synthetic Figment......Page 49 Fidelity......Page 50 The Spruce......Page 51 Spiral Bound......Page 52 North......Page 53 Red-Legged Kittiwake......Page 54 Excursion......Page 57 Venturing into landscapes both interior and exterior, this title explores what Wilson calls 'the complex rigged wildness' of geographical, emotional, and verbal states, a territory located 'somewhere in that/enjambment within/a cave within the brain'.