Book Review
Title: Skin Divers
Author: Anne Michaels
Publisher: McLelland & Stewart
Pages: 63
Released: September 4^th 2007
ISBN: 978-0-7710-5907-0
$17.99 

3 Stars

Reviewed By: Kindah Mardam Bey 

Anne Michael's is known for her extraordinary debut fictional novel Fugitive Pieces, which is rich with texture, interwoven story and complexity. Recently turned into a feature length movie by Serendipity Point Films, Fugitive Pieces has won international acclaim for Michaels. It was in poetry where Michaels first got her publishing start, similar to Margaret Atwood, another Canadian storyteller. Anne Michael's has wrote two previous works of poetry before Fugitive Pieces hit bookshelves; The Weight Of Oranges and Miner's Pond.

Skin Divers, Michael's third book of poetry, and my first time reading her poetry, was a somewhat jarring perspective after reading Fugitive Pieces. Most of the poems are about love and overall I found them very disassociated and hard to get a handle on; as if Michaels was simply putting words together, which was even too abstract for someone like myself who generally loves highly conceptual poetry. It was disheartening to read many of Michael's poems about love that came across as what one should say when in a state of bliss, instead of someone actually expressing themselves from a point of bliss.

Then the heaven's opened and a large ray of light shone through. Michael's turned her attention to poems of love based on actual people. One such poem, at the start of part two ‘The Second Search,' was about Marie Curie and the loss of her beloved husband. I soon realized that when Michael's can research a subject matter, slip into another's shoes and walk a mile, she is at her absolute best. All of a sudden her poetry seemed equally as fantastic and powerful as her novel. ‘Ice House,' about Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott and his sculptor wife turned widow, Kathleen Scott, is a stunning and melancholy poem.

She writes: 

The men returned from France
To Ellerman's Hospital
Their courage
was beautiful.
I understood the work at once:
To use scar tissue to advantage.
To construct through art,
one's face to the world. Sculpt what's missing.

Another stand-out poem ‘There Is No City That Does Not Dream,' which is a beautiful tribute to how a city evolves, exists and it's timeless appeal. The experience of reading a book of poetry by Anne Michaels, such as Skin Divers, after reading Fugitive Pieces was somewhat jarring. It is easy to see where Michaels talents' abound. She is a storyteller of other people's stories. In that aspect, we can only highly anticipate her follow up novel to Fugitive Pieces.