Infinite Gradation
£9.99
In this, her first volume of non- fiction, Anne Michaels, the internationally award-winning poet and novelist, author of Fugitive Pieces, reflects on the ethical, emotional and philosophical implications of language and the creative act.
She considers the lives of certain artists and writers – Paul Celan, Jack Chambers, Eva Hesse, Etty Hillesum, Nelly Sachs and Claire Wilks – who have made work at the very limits of experience, in remarkably different situations and with radically variant materials. Asking those urgent questions, Michaels explores how the artistic expression of being might serve as a witness in extremis; and she examines the nature of responsibility, and the form it takes in poetry, fiction and image-making, especially in the face of atrocity, when everything is at stake.
Infinite Gradation is an astonishing meditation on what art makes of death. In lines as precise and profound as any Michaels has written, it is also a lyrically compelling praise song to love and the enduring mysteries at the core of existence.
Infinite Gradation is published in an edition of 600 copies, of which 26 specials are signed and lettered by the author.
‘Monumental. Fugitive Pieces is the most important book I have read for forty years.’ – John Berger
‘The poems in The Weight of Oranges go way beyond games or fashion or politics . . . They represent the human being entire.’ – Michael Ondaatje
Format: paperback, 182 x 102 mm, 108pp, perfect bound; 600 copies (incl. 26 special edition copies)
Afterword by Gareth Evans
ISBN: 978-1-9998161-0-0
RRP: £9.99 | £25.00
Publication date: 9 October 2017
Out of stock
Description
We ask of art not that we understand it, but that it understand us…
In this, her first volume of non- fiction, Anne Michaels, the internationally award-winning poet and novelist, author of Fugitive Pieces, reflects on the ethical, emotional and philosophical implications of language and the creative act.
She considers the lives of certain artists and writers – Paul Celan, Jack Chambers, Eva Hesse, Etty Hillesum, Nelly Sachs and Claire Wilks – who have made work at the very limits of experience, in remarkably different situations and with radically variant materials. Asking those urgent questions, Michaels explores how the artistic expression of being might serve as a witness in extremis; and she examines the nature of responsibility, and the form it takes in poetry, fiction and image-making, especially in the face of atrocity, when everything is at stake.
Infinite Gradation is an astonishing meditation on what art makes of death. In lines as precise and profound as any Michaels has written, it is also a lyrically compelling praise song to love and the enduring mysteries at the core of existence.