Customer Reviews

My Shining Archipelago (Yale Series of Younger Poets)

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I love these poems, and find myself returning to them again and again over the years. Talvikki Ansel combines the acute precision of a scientific eye with shimmering, translucent, finely-honed language. Her mastery of the sonnet form in the second and third sections of the volume seems virtually effortless -- as if the poems have simply transcended the rigors of form. These are poems of fierce and delicate inquiry (a study of bats, the dissection of a bird, the exploration of a pear down to its very core, the unraveling of the memory of a season spent in the Amazon Rainforest); poems of travel, explorers, and exploration; and poems of being forever changed by the processes of inquiry and exploration, like Caliban, or Elizabeth Bishop's Robinson Crusoe. Indeed, perhaps Ansel is, or will be, our Elizabeth Bishop of the new century. Ansel's poetic voice is clear, warmly modulated, and threaded throughout with marvelous flickers of quiet whimsy and humor. These are poems that resonate and linger. I highly recommend this book.

Telvicki Ansel communicates the multiple awareness of self, nature, and the unmanefest. She can have you hold a pear as she has held it, and feel the humorous frustration of raising miniature horses.

"My Shining Archipelago" is a real find.