All We Saw: Poems

by Anne Michaels

Poems of elegy in the aftermath of a great love from the internationally best-selling, award-winning novelist ( Fugitive Pieces, The Winter Vault ) and poet.

In All We Saw, Anne Michaels returns with strikingly original poems to explore one of her essential "what love makes us capable of, and incapable of." Here are the ways in which passion must accept, must insist, that "death . . . give / not only take from us." This piercing short collection treats desire in a style that is chaste, spare, figuratively modulated, and almost classical in its precision. In lyrics that ponder what happens to the bodies of lovers--so vital when together, different when apart, death coming to one before the other--Michaels embraces both the intimacy and the vastness of the connection between two people. Love's sheltering understanding is a powerful presence in all the poems, with its particular imagery (the ringing fog, the white page of the bed), as is the shattering loss of its end. With Michaels, we enter a space that is "not inside / not dusk's / doorway," where memory might be kept alive.

Genres: Poetry, Canada, Nonfiction, Death, Adult

96 pages, Hardcover

First published September 26, 2017

About the author

Anne 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.

Reviews

[Edita · Rating 5 out of 5]

each word a chemistry binding us
to particular endless longings
we take now as our own
*
 how much that hope
hurt
*
Somewhere a woman fills a glass with clear water
and flowers drink their last moments
in the last light of the fields
*
Somewhere there is a man who is not afraid to live in a
woman’s hope
*
was it the sea turning around
was it a soul seeking shelter
in the longing of another
[...]
was it the sky growing colder
was it a heart making room
for the one who has not come

[Nell Beaudry McLachlan · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is no world in which I review an Anne Michaels oeuvre and do it justice, but it is, as always, worth so much more than its five stars.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Michaels’ fifth collection of verse is divided into six sections, with several composed of just one long poem. As in “Somewhere Night Is Falling,” many of the poems are built around a repeated phrase – here literally every line begins with “Somewhere,” imagining all the disparate life experiences that are occurring simultaneously around the world. Love and loss, art and the sea are recurring topics. The repetition makes this rather hypnotic collection pass quickly, but its details have already started to fade for me.

[Eric Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m often drawn to writing that acknowledges the awe one feels as an individual gazing at the universe but from an entirely secular perspective. The world and the fact of existence seems spectacular enough without attributing it to any grand design. (Nevertheless, I fully respect people who draw wisdom, comfort and community from different kinds of faith.) In her latest collection of poetry “All We Saw” it feels like Anne Michaels is beckoning the reader to join her on a spiritual journey that is entirely unconnected with religion. Her pared down poems describe the path of life as if travelling in a boat. She frequently makes pithy observations about the difficult process of cherishing our experiences without being too attached to them, especially with how this is done in writing and visual art. Her poems shift back and forth from the personal to the broadly objective to explore the tension of savouring what we love, but also learning to let it go.

Read my full review of All We Saw by Anne Michaels on LonesomeReader

[Michaela · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s not possible to stop reading this! I absolutely love it!

[Ada · Rating 4 out of 5]

És un do
saber dir el dol
així.

[iana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read All We Saw just because I was drawn to the pretty cover (you have to admit it's aesthetically pleasing) and because I'm exploring a lot of poetry. Well, let me tell you, this was a waaay different level from the poetry I've read. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. It was slightly confusing and I had no idea what it was talking about in some parts, but the words were woven beautifully. They were written so thoughtfully. It was great.

[Leif · Rating 5 out of 5]

Words of mourning have always beed lodged deeply within Michaels' work. Take, for example, the dreams of death intermixed with desire in her poem "Anna":

Our last morning together we sat with Anna’s family in dark rooms.
We watched her mother put a sweater in the coffin.
These are endings that bind,
love still alive, squirming in the rind of the heart.

Later, see her declaration in Correspondences that books are "not our memory of the dead, / but what the dead / remember." The relationship between the living and the dead, and the mediating role of books, words, and language, has been and continues to be one of the central pillars of Michaels' work.

In All We Saw, Michaels simultaneously delves deep into that vein of elegaic mourning while also finding some peace and calm in the recollections that personal mourning afford. Here's "I Dreamed Again", wherein the dreams of the past are things to be allowed to depart rather than squirming worms in the heart:

I dreamed again you were alive, and work
certain it was your voice
love is whiskey, it is milk,
it is water don't ever, you said in the dream,
think I'm gone

I woke a little more, a moment or two,
then remembered. Memory makes it so. Keeps you
under the trees.

So I did not turn on the lamp
but lay until I felt again your warmth with mine
heard your voice in my hair

I lay there a long time,
forgetting

There are many such interlocking parts here, carefully seeded across the plain of text to transform a set of devastating personal wounds into a calmer field of meditations. In the background are the figures of John Berger and Mark Strand, as the end matters make clear, but the poems concern themselves with the remaining works of figurative art made by Berger and Strand as much as by the personal bodies of those newly-dead poets themselves. This is clearest perhaps in Bison, where the two blur and are carefully, lovingly separated at the bedside.

If I'm not clear, then I will say this: Anne Michaels' All We Saw is a deeply felt and intensely meditative set of poems on mourning and loss that finds its peace where it can, and it is a beautiful little book.

[Diana Iozzia · Rating 3 out of 5]

“All We Saw”
Written by Anne Michaels
Review written by Diana Iozzia

Recently, I’ve been really getting back into reading poetry. After a great booktuber recommended R.H. Sin’s books, I read many of them. I also decided to read more, and then more poetry. I stumbled upon “All We Saw” by Anne Michaels. This is a very small collection of slightly angsty, slightly confusing, slightly naturalistic poetry. I personally tend to read natural, simple, and romantic poetry, so this had a slight step in the right direction.

I honestly dislike rating poetry, because I feel that poetry is so different to everyone who reads it, especially modern poetry. I am personally rating this, as I read it, not for quality or for recommendations. I just couldn’t really get into it. Many of the poems in this collection were very long and not so cohesive. I enjoyed some parts of poems more than the poem entirely, so to best describe what I liked, I am listing the page numbers and/or name of the poem.

Pg. 14 from ‘Sea of Lanterns’.
‘Somewhere Night is Falling’, this is a great, long poem that each sentence starts with ‘somewhere’. I am a fan of form poems, so I enjoyed this as well as ‘To Write’.
‘Five Islands’.
Pg. 42 from ‘Bison’
Pg. 64 from ‘There Was a Distant Sound’

The design of the book kind of bugged me. For a very small poem book, you could probably contain all of the poems on maybe six printed pages. Yaaaaay, what a great use of dead trees… Anyway, the cover image is fitting, the book without the cover is as well. Other than that, this book was a mixed bag. I enjoyed certain poems and enjoyed certain lines. I think I’ll be passing this along to a friend. I enjoyed this for what it was worth, but I don’t think I’ll be continuing to keep this in my collection. I found myself trying to pick this up, but I just kept feeling so meh about it.

I received a complementary copy for reviewing purposes.

[Kirsty · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did not enjoy this quite as much as the astounding 'Skin Divers'; regardless, it is a very thoughtful poetry book, filled with startling imagery, and beautiful, aching prose.

[Sandra Miksa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anne Micheals always make me feel the grief I don't want to feel but need to feel.

[Nicole (bookwyrm) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good collection of poetry. A lot of it seems focused on the grieving process, though it isn't always explicit and it is often very lovely in descriptions. I thankfully haven't suffered major loss lately, or I might connect to this volume better. Still, these poems are very evocative and worth reading.

[Scot O'Hara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book of poetry. The imagery and language are evocative and beautifully expressed. The sense of loss, love, and humanity is powerful and personal. Michaels employs an incredible economy of words to express immense ideas and powerful emotion.

[Meaghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars
.
This poetry was deeply felt though fragmented. A true elegy to lost friends and lovers. It unfortunately didn't resonate too much with me, but there were a few poems that I enjoyed.
.
My favorites from the collection:
-"Somewhere Night Is Falling"
-"Not"
-"Five Islands"
-"Hyphen"
-"Bison"
-"I Dreamed Again"

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection that sneaks up on you. It is better read all in one sitting as the poems are small and work together and on each other.

[Rhiley Jade · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5 stars!

[Trevor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty words. Not one poem was memorable though.

[Shawn Bird · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some striking poems here.

[Imen Benyoub · Rating 3 out of 5]

because words are secrets passed one to another on a train
the same train where letters were crammed between slats
to be found by strangers

[Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anne Michaels achingly raw and passionate prose ponders the connection between two people. A captivating book of poems reflecting on the turbulence of emotion that love evokes. Thank you to Bloomsbury Publishing for giving me a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Dolors · Rating 5 out of 5]

Discovering Anne Michaels' poetry for the first time was like opening a door to a hidden garden, where every word bloomed with the delicate intricacies of the human heart and soul. This unknown garden felt somehow familiar, though, as Michaels’ verses echoed literary giants, merging past voices with her unique expression.

I was reminded once again of Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse”. Michaels’ verses capture the fleeting moments and the lasting impact of love and grief, evoking light and water imagery as a metaphor for time and memory. Lanterns and lighthouses:

“lanterns empty their light
into the water
where they are not extinguished
each lamp sets fire to the sea,
igniting where it drowns.”
Sea of Lanterns

The fragmented nature of modern existence, the failure of communication, and the disintegration of cultural and personal identity are also ever-present in Michaels’ poems. An impending sense of longing and introspection and the never-ending search for meaning in a fragmented world reminded me of T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”.

“Late August mountain a wimple starched folds
birds the black page turning
the message folded and unfolded
in that turning of the page inside out,
in that scarf of shadow, in that message passing…”
Late August

Reading Anne Michaels' anthology "All We Saw" was like a gentle whisper to the soul, each poem a delicate brushstroke that reminded me of my love for poetry, reminding me of the spare beauty of few words on a blank page where every line is a revelation; where every verse emerges as a testament to the profound depths of the human spirit.
Why write? Why read? Michaels’ answers: “because words are mirrors that set fire to paper”.
Anne Michaels’ words saw me, set me on fire, reminding me not only of who I am, but of who I was, who I wanted to be.

[Alarie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love novels written by poets, who can’t help but translate the world with astonishing descriptions. Michaels’ novel, Fugitive Pieces, led me to her poems.

This collection is breathtaking. You could almost drown in the white space, but you won’t. Never has silence said as much, maybe more, than the poet’s words. I’m astonished at Michaels’ genius in sensing that. “Bison” is fourteen pages long, but not a long poem. Here are pages 10 and 11

“the stillness between silence
and muteness

(new page)

the moment desire forcibly
is renamed
grief

the precise space between
those two words”

In those open spaces between lines, we float on a quiet lake or wander off into our own thoughts, we try to figure out what she is saying, wonder who is dying, or hurry back to the bedside of those we have lost. Although the poems are often elliptical, they make us feel even without full understanding, just as music sung in a foreign language can still move us to tears. (I can imagine many a journal editor refusing to give the poet 14 pages when the poem could be squeezed onto 3, but it would be a much weaker poem for the squishing.)

Elegiac poetry is often difficult to read, concerned mainly with the fear of impending death or the raw pain of loss. Michaels takes a more mystical and balanced approach, focusing on how love and memory can erase the borders between life and death, between past and future:

“… will we go
to a place where the past
is new tell me
this winter morning

where that past is hiding”
(from “Before Us”)


Although what Michaels can do with a few handfuls of words is astounding, the first three lines of “Hyphen” could stand alone as a haiku or epitaph:

“ -

a single stitch
the life entire”

[Dee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anne Michaels wrote this collection of poetry to honor her dear friends who passed away in a short span of time. It is true when they say words fail in death. Anne tries to bring in love, intimacy, mystery of death, the unknown into this elegy. Some of the poems are beautiful to say the least. This is my first book of Anne Michaels, am sure the other award winning books are fantastic but this one, though it is painful at places, is leaving me even before it started to haunt. (Hoping that's what Anne intended to do).

Amongst the ones I liked, here is a sample:

BEFORE US

will we travel
to the city where
so much happened
before us where once
you asked me and I
couldn’t will we go
to a place where the past
is new tell me
this winter morning
where that past is hiding

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book upon waking up this morning and finished it quickly enough to begin my workday (almost) on time. It's a very sparse field of words, seemingly most related to the loss of a spouse. A serious topic. I think i must be walled off right now because i rarely felt the loss. I was stuck on the words or even less meaningful the visuals of the words on the pages as the pages flipped onward with little resistance.

I might have found some types of poetry that i respond to and some types that i don't. A few more dozen from the lieberry thru the rest of this blighted year might ossify my opinions on that. Or maybe more variety will open me up.

I hope for the latter. Please pray for me. Or, read for me, y'know, if you're also unspiritual.

[Juliano · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anne Michaels now joins Anne Carson on my list of favourite Canadian poets thanks to her new collection, All We Saw. In the briefest poems Michaels finds the clearest expressions, always cutting right to the heart of the thing, and with such ascendant language that you find yourself moved beyond reason when she muses, for instance, about a hyphen. If there's a power in naming things then these poems are plentiful in power, attaining such striking honesty and emotional integrity.

[Eve L-A Witherington · Rating 4 out of 5]

The intricate storytelling through these poems about love and loss make for a tough read. Brutal and honest about the joys and blows in the rollercoaster of a relationship as it plays out.

Poems to relate and commiserate to.

Many thanks to the publishers for allowing me to review this book for them!

[ink · Rating 3 out of 5]

“what the nape
remembers, pushed to the ground,
or the eyes, or the vitals
sweating awake, snowy morning,
black trees. the body leaps to be rid of itself,
or takes what it needs. the body
turns to its own explanation    knowing
“I cannot live without you” and
“this too shall pass”    
the lump in the throat
moving with each swallow”

[Elsie · Rating 4 out of 5]

“From the first moment we were at rest the way light falls”

3.5-3.75 rounded up. Solid and easy to read. I think Michael’s earlier collection “Skin Divers” struck me more than this but I definitely found it work my time to read this and it was a pleasant read! If you see it at your library it’s worth taking out.

[Mauzi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not much of a poetry person, but I really liked this. It felt powerful, and raw - it was evocative, and there were a lot in there that stood out to me - somewhere night is falling & ask aloud are my top picks though.

[Mads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bought on impulse because the cover was so beautiful. Do not regret that decision in the least. Stunning poetry--multifaceted and powerful. It's going to take a few reads to unpack everything emotionally. A task I look forward to.