The Island

Poetry. In this book-length poem, Beth Murray creates a work of meditative insight and figural invention. THE ISLAND seduces with its calm insistence yet unsettles with its almost blinding sensitivities, in a complex movement between solitude and engagement, imagination and will. Alice Notley writes, "THE ISLAND is starkly lucid but mysterious: pain has changed the poet's perception of 'the world' into a more symbolic, more monolithic truth. Words like 'tunnel' and 'island' refer to what lies on the common map, but also to shapes of self and body. And the truer animals--especially aquatic creatures--are always nearby, in this impeccable, essential poem that displaces, then relocates, 'as your voice grows.'" Also available from SPD by Beth Murray is HOPE ETERNITY SEEN ON THE HIP OF A RABBIT.