CORRESPONDENCES

This beautifully conceived book brings together the best-selling novelist and poet Anne Michaels and the acclaimed artist and writer Bernice Eisenstein in a unique, accordion-style format. Michaels' resonant book-length poem, a historical and personal elegy, unfolds on one side of the book's pages. On the other side, in unison with the poem, are Bernice Eisenstein's haunting portraits of the twentieth-century writers and thinkers Michaels' poem summons, for whom language was the closest thing to salvation: figures such as Paul Celan, Nelly Sachs, W. G. Sebald, Anna Akhmatova, Primo Levi, and Albert Einstein, each accompanied by quotations that illuminate the deeper connections among them. The poem is written to be read in sequence, as well as to join together with the portraits in a dialogue that perfectly reflects the thematic interconnectedness of this collaboration: 'an alphabet of spirits and spirit' (Eisenstein); 'the moment one life/becomes another' (Michaels). A stunning creation in both form and content, Correspondences is an unforgettable visual and poetic experience and a profound reflection on how the table of history is set by individuals.