Infinite Gradation
CBC Books | | Posted: September 10, 2018 3:48 PM | Last Updated: July 19, 2019
Anne Michaels
Infinite Gradation is an astonishing meditation on the mystery at the heart of our mortality.
In lines as precise and profound as any Michaels has written, Infinite Gradation movingly explores the nature of responsibility in extremis and the forms it takes — it is about hope in art, what art makes of death and bears witness to the love and lives of visual artists and writers who have made work at the limits of experience. (From Exile Editions)
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From the book
It was the finest stone you had ever worked, bitumen black, fine as the finest Ashford, black as earth, black as space. And when you polished it, the glow rose from within like a soul from a body, like the shine on a black whale breaching the sea.
In your hands the stone became glass, it became water, a dark pool you could step into and disappear.
And when it was finished, each corner sharp as a fold, and lowered into place amid the trees, the leaves swam in that black water, tossed and travelled across the stone, where they remain forever, even when there's no visible shadow, the way the stars stay in the sky when morning comes.
From Infinite Gradation by Anne Michaels ©2018. Published by Exile Editions.