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Correspondences: A poem and portraits
A rare and beautifully produced "accordion" book by renowned novelist and poet Anne Michaels and acclaimed artist and writer Bernice Eisenstein that will cause a stir for both its form and its content.Anne Michaels's resonant book-length poem--which unfolds on one side of the pages of this accordion book--ranges from the universal to the intimate, as she writes of historical figures for whom language was the closest thing to salvation; on the other side, we have Bernice Eisenstein's luminous portraits of and quotes from such twentieth-century writers and thinkers as Paul Celan, Nelly Sachs, W. G. Sebald, Anna Akhmatova, Primo Levi, and Albert Einstein. The poetry and portraits join together in a dialogue that can be read in any direction and any order, in a format that perfectly reflects the thematic interconnectedness of this "an alphabet of spirits and spirit; an elegy of remembrance" (Eisenstein); "just as a conversation becomes the third side of the page . . . the moment one life becomes another" (Michaels).
128 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 2013
3 people are currently reading
144 people want to read
About the author
Anne Michaels
24 books597 followersAnne Michaels (born 15 April 1958) is a Canadian poet and novelist whose work has been translated and published in over 45 countries. Her books have garnered dozens of international awards including the Orange Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Lannan Award for Fiction and the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for the Americas. She is the recipient of honorary degrees, the Guggenheim Fellowship and many other honours. She has been shortlisted for the Governor General's Award, the Griffin Poetry Prize, twice shortlisted for the Giller Prize and twice long-listed for the International Dublin Literary Award. Michaels won a 2019 Vine Award for Infinite Gradation, her first volume of non-fiction. Michaels was the poet laureate of Toronto, Ontario, Canada from 2016 to 2019, and she is perhaps best known for her novel Fugitive Pieces, which was adapted for the screen in 2007.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
August 3, 2021
One of my favorite books of the year, which I received this morning and read today and will read and read again. It's an accordion book, in a beautiful hardcover frame, of a "poem" created as a kind of pastiche out of a very few lines from the writing of various individuals that bind themselves together in various ways, that correspond. On corresponding pages are the portraits of these individuals, done by Bernice Eisenstein. And then Michaels does, on the other side of the accordion, her own poetic reflection on some of the historical figures that for her work together, many of them Jews, many of them important figures in the Holocaust and WWII, generally.
The poem and all of it, really, is historical, but the impulse for the project seems to be primarily personal, focusing as it does on the death of her father, which serves as the basis for a meditation on language, on oppositions, of language, silence, art (no words) and art (with words). The portraits and the fragments of language from each portraited figure are haunting, lovely, spare, just minimal shards of words that touch on the ways various figures correspond, including, among others, W.G. Sebald, Kafka, Einstein, Primo Levi, and help us understand how they help her think of her family, her father, meaningful work, resistance to oppression everywhere, language, hope. . .
The correspondences are multiple, between her father and all these famous people, and especially between him and her, but there are two particular sets of correspondences that are central here, between Paul Celan and Nelly Sachs, and between Osip and Nadezhda Mandelstam.
I guess the thing that disappoints me a little is that the poem Michaels writes is more dramatic and narrative and less poetic and fragmented than what she presents in her excerpts from the writings of those in portraits. I like that language best, because it is evocative, intuitive, they speak with few words, and no narrative, as the portraits themselves do. Michaels in her elegy and narrative poetic meditation says more than she needs to in her poem. It is the poem of a novelist, not Celan or Pessoa, those she lauds.
But those observations are not really so important in my assessment of the whole project.this is still a beautiful artifact in so many ways, and powerful, provocative, worth reading and re-reading.
One more thing: I did not know that there were words on both sides of the accordion when I first opened it! I thought it was only the fragments of writing and the poetry, and I loved that. It was only when I was writing the review/reflection here that I actually dropped the book and saw it had Michael's poem on the other side! I just say that because it may not be obvious, but that's cool, too. Because of the complexity of the presentation, I wouldn't be surprised I missed still more things.
As Michaels writes, of the process, "not two to make one, but two to make the third. Just as a conversation can become the third side of the page." Each of the three dimensions of this book creates its own set of correspondences. Including those correspondences to you, of course, she wants that. Also, some of the quoted material will give you more ideas for great works to read for even more correspondences to your life.
The poem and all of it, really, is historical, but the impulse for the project seems to be primarily personal, focusing as it does on the death of her father, which serves as the basis for a meditation on language, on oppositions, of language, silence, art (no words) and art (with words). The portraits and the fragments of language from each portraited figure are haunting, lovely, spare, just minimal shards of words that touch on the ways various figures correspond, including, among others, W.G. Sebald, Kafka, Einstein, Primo Levi, and help us understand how they help her think of her family, her father, meaningful work, resistance to oppression everywhere, language, hope. . .
The correspondences are multiple, between her father and all these famous people, and especially between him and her, but there are two particular sets of correspondences that are central here, between Paul Celan and Nelly Sachs, and between Osip and Nadezhda Mandelstam.
I guess the thing that disappoints me a little is that the poem Michaels writes is more dramatic and narrative and less poetic and fragmented than what she presents in her excerpts from the writings of those in portraits. I like that language best, because it is evocative, intuitive, they speak with few words, and no narrative, as the portraits themselves do. Michaels in her elegy and narrative poetic meditation says more than she needs to in her poem. It is the poem of a novelist, not Celan or Pessoa, those she lauds.
But those observations are not really so important in my assessment of the whole project.this is still a beautiful artifact in so many ways, and powerful, provocative, worth reading and re-reading.
One more thing: I did not know that there were words on both sides of the accordion when I first opened it! I thought it was only the fragments of writing and the poetry, and I loved that. It was only when I was writing the review/reflection here that I actually dropped the book and saw it had Michael's poem on the other side! I just say that because it may not be obvious, but that's cool, too. Because of the complexity of the presentation, I wouldn't be surprised I missed still more things.
As Michaels writes, of the process, "not two to make one, but two to make the third. Just as a conversation can become the third side of the page." Each of the three dimensions of this book creates its own set of correspondences. Including those correspondences to you, of course, she wants that. Also, some of the quoted material will give you more ideas for great works to read for even more correspondences to your life.
December 9, 2013
'the rain that held the light / that fell, the rain that fell, / the light that held'
A gorgeous long poem from Anne Michaels on one side of this book. Intriguing, although I wish they were more so, portraits by Bernice Eisenstein on the other (note the eyes on these paintings). This is an accordion book - so you can either see all the stanzas of a poem stretched out in one very long piece of paper or all the portraits on the other side, again stretched out on one very long piece of paper. It's pretty grand book design.
The echoes, the continuous reading...: it's like Pale Fire minus the pomp, Four Quartets minus the Eliot; in others' hands that would likely be a problem. But it is not here. The 'correspondences' - from Nelly Sachs and Paul Celan to Anne Michaels and her recently deceased father Isaiah, from the poem and its influences to the portraits and their realities - forced me today to read this twice with the desire to continue to re-read it yet again (damn work getting in the way). It's not that it's a difficult read but that it's a circular - mentally and physically - book.
A taste of the poetry: 'The surface of the water / cut and mended, cut and mended, / scissored into the endless fragments and joinings, / places for the light to settle / then drown, and settle again, / a line break forever changing the word above / and the word below, / altered by a breath.' Is this about poetry, a waterscape, life? Please sir, I want some more.
A gorgeous long poem from Anne Michaels on one side of this book. Intriguing, although I wish they were more so, portraits by Bernice Eisenstein on the other (note the eyes on these paintings). This is an accordion book - so you can either see all the stanzas of a poem stretched out in one very long piece of paper or all the portraits on the other side, again stretched out on one very long piece of paper. It's pretty grand book design.
The echoes, the continuous reading...: it's like Pale Fire minus the pomp, Four Quartets minus the Eliot; in others' hands that would likely be a problem. But it is not here. The 'correspondences' - from Nelly Sachs and Paul Celan to Anne Michaels and her recently deceased father Isaiah, from the poem and its influences to the portraits and their realities - forced me today to read this twice with the desire to continue to re-read it yet again (damn work getting in the way). It's not that it's a difficult read but that it's a circular - mentally and physically - book.
A taste of the poetry: 'The surface of the water / cut and mended, cut and mended, / scissored into the endless fragments and joinings, / places for the light to settle / then drown, and settle again, / a line break forever changing the word above / and the word below, / altered by a breath.' Is this about poetry, a waterscape, life? Please sir, I want some more.
March 28, 2021
I read this book first time during January with a friend of mine. We read a couple of pages every evening, and although I loved the poem back then a lot, I must say that I loved it even more today.
This book is a very beautiful eulogy and a poem about grief, but in a gentle way. As I was today going through a sudden (but not surprising) encounter with grief, I found myself picking up this poem and going through it, and I dare to say that a few books are as comforting and soft companions as this. Michaels writes about her own grief, but at the same time invites the reader to share it, and her poetry is cathartic and kind.
This book is a very beautiful eulogy and a poem about grief, but in a gentle way. As I was today going through a sudden (but not surprising) encounter with grief, I found myself picking up this poem and going through it, and I dare to say that a few books are as comforting and soft companions as this. Michaels writes about her own grief, but at the same time invites the reader to share it, and her poetry is cathartic and kind.
January 8, 2015
Having recently read the novel Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels, and discussed it at length with our book group, I became keenly interested in anything Michaels has written. It did not take long to discover this wonderful book, Correspondences. It could easily be sub-titled “Fugitive Pieces Part II.” Let me explain:
The novel weaves the pieces of fictional lives affected by the Holocaust: Jakob, the sole survivor in his Jewish family; Athos, the Greek geologist who literally digs the young boy Jakob from Polish soil, carries the boy to safety away from German occupied Poland, and in turn adopts and raises Jakob to manhood in Toronto.
Correspondences, a poem, weaves the pieces of real lives also affected by the Holocaust and other pogroms such as the Stalinist purges, for example: Isaiah Michaels (1918-2009), the author’s father, who escaped from Poland, finding his way to Toronto; Etty Hillesum (1914-1943), the young Jewish woman whose diaries have become a classic example of spirituality at-work able to experience the Holy in the most un-holy place on earth, dying along with her parents at Auschwitz; Helen Keller (1880-1968) whose publications were banned and burned in Germany in 1933; and Anna Akmatova (1889-1966), the Russian poet whose first two husbands died in Gulags, whose son was imprisoned just for being her son, and whose poetry survives in part because of her friends memorizing her writings.
All of the above and all of the remaining 23 people included in Anne Michaels’s book were her father’s contemporaries, and this book is an elegy to Isaiah Michaels. However, it can be seen as an elegy to each and everyone featured in the book ranging from the Jewish novelist S.Y. Agnon (1888-1970) to Fred Wander, the Austrian Jew {aka Fritz Rosenblatt}(1917-2006), who was interred in twenty camps during WWII, writing about those experiences only after his young daughter’s death.
As one opens this book, truly an art piece, we find the first two and the last two pages devoted to brief vinettes concerning each of the featured contemporaries of the author’s father. Next, the reader discovers beautiful portrait renderings by artist and writer Bernice Eisenstein of the 26 pillars of this poetic work. Along with the portraits on a facing page are to be found statements by or about the individual -- truly “fugitive pieces” of their lives. These pages fold out in accordion-fashion, and by flipping the book the poem begins.
The poem is one long continuous narrative weaving together the “fugitive pieces” of 26 lives. This is almost a seamless creation. There are few periods, indeed, few commas throughout the 54-page poem. Very near the end, beginning with “the morning light, the same crimson,” ending with the stanza “Come, it’s time to set the table,” 30 pages go by without a period and infrequently even a comma.
This book seems to be an exercise in processing what was and what might have been. It brings forth memory of all sorts, the good, the bad, and the horrific, aiming for a certain resolution, a certain healing. It is, to quote Molly Fumia in her book Safe Passage, a “process of exhuming all that has been, examining its precious contents, and lovingly preparing it for reburial.” (Conari Press, 142).
Michaels’s Correspondences connects the Gang of 26, so to speak, with not just the corresponding intersections of their lives vis-a-viz state-sponsored atrocities, but the very real correspondences carried on by such people as Paul Celan (1920-1970), the Romanian writer, with Nelly Sachs (1891-1970), the German Jew; and the Russian Jewish poet Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938), his memoirist wife Nadezhda (1899-1980), as well as their correspondences with Anna Akmatova.
Anne Michaels’s Correspondences, like her Fugitive Pieces is not a book to be read and filed away. Michaels’s writing requires and deserves to be read and re-read, and re-read again!
The novel weaves the pieces of fictional lives affected by the Holocaust: Jakob, the sole survivor in his Jewish family; Athos, the Greek geologist who literally digs the young boy Jakob from Polish soil, carries the boy to safety away from German occupied Poland, and in turn adopts and raises Jakob to manhood in Toronto.
Correspondences, a poem, weaves the pieces of real lives also affected by the Holocaust and other pogroms such as the Stalinist purges, for example: Isaiah Michaels (1918-2009), the author’s father, who escaped from Poland, finding his way to Toronto; Etty Hillesum (1914-1943), the young Jewish woman whose diaries have become a classic example of spirituality at-work able to experience the Holy in the most un-holy place on earth, dying along with her parents at Auschwitz; Helen Keller (1880-1968) whose publications were banned and burned in Germany in 1933; and Anna Akmatova (1889-1966), the Russian poet whose first two husbands died in Gulags, whose son was imprisoned just for being her son, and whose poetry survives in part because of her friends memorizing her writings.
All of the above and all of the remaining 23 people included in Anne Michaels’s book were her father’s contemporaries, and this book is an elegy to Isaiah Michaels. However, it can be seen as an elegy to each and everyone featured in the book ranging from the Jewish novelist S.Y. Agnon (1888-1970) to Fred Wander, the Austrian Jew {aka Fritz Rosenblatt}(1917-2006), who was interred in twenty camps during WWII, writing about those experiences only after his young daughter’s death.
As one opens this book, truly an art piece, we find the first two and the last two pages devoted to brief vinettes concerning each of the featured contemporaries of the author’s father. Next, the reader discovers beautiful portrait renderings by artist and writer Bernice Eisenstein of the 26 pillars of this poetic work. Along with the portraits on a facing page are to be found statements by or about the individual -- truly “fugitive pieces” of their lives. These pages fold out in accordion-fashion, and by flipping the book the poem begins.
The poem is one long continuous narrative weaving together the “fugitive pieces” of 26 lives. This is almost a seamless creation. There are few periods, indeed, few commas throughout the 54-page poem. Very near the end, beginning with “the morning light, the same crimson,” ending with the stanza “Come, it’s time to set the table,” 30 pages go by without a period and infrequently even a comma.
This book seems to be an exercise in processing what was and what might have been. It brings forth memory of all sorts, the good, the bad, and the horrific, aiming for a certain resolution, a certain healing. It is, to quote Molly Fumia in her book Safe Passage, a “process of exhuming all that has been, examining its precious contents, and lovingly preparing it for reburial.” (Conari Press, 142).
Michaels’s Correspondences connects the Gang of 26, so to speak, with not just the corresponding intersections of their lives vis-a-viz state-sponsored atrocities, but the very real correspondences carried on by such people as Paul Celan (1920-1970), the Romanian writer, with Nelly Sachs (1891-1970), the German Jew; and the Russian Jewish poet Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938), his memoirist wife Nadezhda (1899-1980), as well as their correspondences with Anna Akmatova.
Anne Michaels’s Correspondences, like her Fugitive Pieces is not a book to be read and filed away. Michaels’s writing requires and deserves to be read and re-read, and re-read again!
January 9, 2014
"I like to think the moon is there/even if I'm not looking at it."
Anne Michaels most recent book of poems is, in essence, one long continuous poem that literally unfolds in your hands. Thebook is constructed like an accordion, and thus like a slinky, the poem can be read forward, back, or rock back and forth in your hands. Each fold, of each page, presents the reader with a thought, a part of the entire poem, or both at the same time. To read Michael's requires time and demands reflection. With the addition of Eisenstein's portraits, the reader is further drawn into a creative experience that is unique.
Correspondences is a challenge, but a book like this is not to be missed.
Anne Michaels most recent book of poems is, in essence, one long continuous poem that literally unfolds in your hands. Thebook is constructed like an accordion, and thus like a slinky, the poem can be read forward, back, or rock back and forth in your hands. Each fold, of each page, presents the reader with a thought, a part of the entire poem, or both at the same time. To read Michael's requires time and demands reflection. With the addition of Eisenstein's portraits, the reader is further drawn into a creative experience that is unique.
Correspondences is a challenge, but a book like this is not to be missed.
March 21, 2015
Correspondences is a curiosity. On what's joined together to form a single strip of paper we're presented with individual portraits by Bernice Eisenstein of such writers and thinkers as Paul Celan, Helen Keller, Fernando Pessoa, and W. G. Sebald, to name only a handful. On the other side of the strip is a long, obscure poem by Anne Michaels which rings of the words and ideas of these people. It's a clumsy book, this single sheet of heavy stock accordioned between hard covers and kept closed by a loop of elastic, a la Moleskin. Very difficult to handle. It's a beautiful object, but its form distracts from the poetry;
November 1, 2013
To look at this book is to grow.
January 9, 2014
I will write a better review for this book later. All I can say for now is that I think this the book is the one I have been waiting to read for my whole life.
January 19, 2022
Correspondence, in the form of an accordion, presents Eisenstein's portraits on one side, accompanied by quotes from each of the figures represented, and Michaels's poems on the other side.
Eisenstein's portraits encapsulate prominent twentieth century thinkers. Specifically, literary figures such as Paul Celan, Fernando Pessoa, Bruno Schultz, Franz Kafka, and Anna Akhmatova.
Michaels's poems are directly related to the portraits in their inclusion of Paul Celan as the central character in a loose narrative, and in their dealing with themes of communion and collaboration juxtaposed against death and departure...
Eisenstein's portraits encapsulate prominent twentieth century thinkers. Specifically, literary figures such as Paul Celan, Fernando Pessoa, Bruno Schultz, Franz Kafka, and Anna Akhmatova.
Michaels's poems are directly related to the portraits in their inclusion of Paul Celan as the central character in a loose narrative, and in their dealing with themes of communion and collaboration juxtaposed against death and departure...
Celan rushed from Paris to Stockholm
and stood, forever
unadmitted, outside
her hospital door.
"Come as quickly as possible,"
Sachs had written
and then:
"Don't, under any circumstances, come."
*
Soon others began to gather at our table,
each brought another and another, stuttering,
a hand on a shoulder, a hand
resting on a cheek, a fall of hair,
a face hidden, and like any conversation
with the ineffable, they came
to suffocate, to surrender,
to moan, to turn away,
to implore, to deplore, shame so deep
there was nothing shame would not
speak, to ruin, to undo, to rectify,
to sanctify, to blaspheme by believing,
to draw us near, to whisper, to reveal,
to signify, to not be kept away,
to keep us close.
November 8, 2020
Dream, speak to me.
March 13, 2021
I had to buy this one. It’s such a unique and beautifully conceived book. Truly a work of art.
February 28, 2022
A solid poem from Michaels and nice portraits. Not as a strong for me personally as her other collection that I’ve read so far but still a good and easy read.
April 12, 2014
Correspondences is an unusual book. It opens up like an accordion to reveal a long multipart poem by Anne Michaels, and a series of haunting portraits of the twentieth-century writers and thinkers by Bernice Eisenstein. Both poems and portraits are part of the same conversation.
Correspondences is a historical and personal elegy, a reflection on the passing of time and of human lives. Thus it is not a book to rush through, but to savour and reflect upon.
And to cherish.
Correspondences is a historical and personal elegy, a reflection on the passing of time and of human lives. Thus it is not a book to rush through, but to savour and reflect upon.
And to cherish.
January 8, 2014
Correspondences is beautiful - textually, structurally and as a gorgeously crafted object. I rhapsodize about it here: http://bookgagabooks.ca/2014/01/07/ce...
January 4, 2014
I thought this was just a fabulous book. I read parts of it aloud and that increased the pleasure exponentially. A beautiful elegy to her father.
September 1, 2014
So Anne Michaels writes a kind of eulogy that is also a response to these paintings that are in the book. You have to let it wash over you and just feel the feels.
January 28, 2016
Review to come
February 22, 2017
Interestingly interactive object with lovely portraits and a beautifully rendered poem that weaves into a long resonating experience
February 22, 2014
It's a short read, but take your time reading it to fully appreciate the beauty of its meaning.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews