Falling Backwards Into Mirrors

by Anne Sorbie

Falling Backwards Into Mirrors is a book that merges poetry and memoir. At the same time, it is a collection grounded in the body, naked and spare, wounded and wonderful. Through vivid, sensual images that evoke feeling, the speaker embraces the naked architecture of her own flesh and bones. In moments of give and take, this healing journey echoes the kind of deep explorations once undertaken by Adrienne Rich and Sylvia Plath. After a fall from a boat, water, distortions of light, and the blur of close reflection inspire the speaker to question the consistency of her own surface. She is hamstrung, literally and figuratively. She can't stand unsupported. She can't walk. She can't sit. While supine for long stretches of time, her mirror becomes a vehicle for metaphor, for seeing, for reflecting, and refracting. Falling Backwards into Mirrors begins with a sudden trauma and moves forward as the surface of the speaker's skin becomes like vellum, and landscape and love, family and community are grafted to hope.

Genres: Poetry

78 pages, Paperback

Published September 30, 2019

About the author

Anne Sorbie is Scottish Canadian writer.

Her fiction, poetry, essays and book reviews have been published by Inanna Publications, Thistledown Press, The University of Alberta Press, Frontenac House, and House of Blue Skies; in magazines and journals such as Alberta Views, Geist, and Other Voices; and online with Brick Books, CBC Canada Writes, Geist, and Wax Poetry and Art.

Reviews

[Lesley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anne Sorbie's debut collection is poetry of self-exposure and self-realization following in the fine tradition of Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich. In halting breaths, pauses, and gasps Sorbie captures the horror of an accident that nearly renders her disabled. Her mastery of clear imagery and vibrant language serves to contrast starkly with the weight of her body's slow recovery. She rails against the feeling of being useless and marginalized by her age. This is a collection worth owning for the poetry, but also for the message of self-love that gives us strength to get through anything.

[Hope · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this collection.