paper • 68 pages • 13.95
ISBN-13: 1-884800-42-4

The Near Surround

Nancy Mitchell

THE CHOSEN

Called forth by you
years ago through
the long tunnel

you made by holding
a mirror to a mirror.

You will see me again—
disguised as a gardener,
picking bees from my sack

to feed birds
that live on low branches.

"In taut, tentative lyrics that attempt a precarious balance in a landscape ravaged by loss, the narrator allows the wounded psyche to begin its laborious process of emergence and renewal. These tentative explorations focus on negative space made palpable when viewed through the gauzy layers of creation's healing art: 'Now I watch / what gathers between us, // between me / and what isn't you.' Like H.D., our neglected master of the fragmentary gesture, Nancy Mitchell offers wrenching testimonials to those vast and luminous human privacies that animate and transform our common selves." — Michael Waters