Poems: The Weight of Oranges, Miner's Pond, Skin Divers

First US edition. 8vo. Pp. ix, 195, [1]. Quarter dark brown cloth over reddish brown boards, lettered in silver to spine. Dust-jacket design by Archie Ferguson.

Signed by the author in black ink on the title page.

An omnibus volume containing author's first three books of verse – The Weight of Oranges (1986), Miner's Pond (1991), and Skin Divers (1999) – all originally published in separate editions, but written as companion volumes. Michaels is the author of the much-garlanded novel Fugitive Pieces (1996), whose writing timeframe neatly overlaps with that of the first two books here, all three sharing ruminations on memory and history as geological layers, archaeological fragments, and vertical accretions of time.

In her essay "Unseen Formations," published in the literary journal Open Letter 8.4 (Summer 1992), Michaels writes of Miner's Pond that the title "tries to hint that being able to see the water's surface and down to the bottom at the same time – the present moment and the past – are of equal importance. The significance of a present moment is not that it is a gate to the past, but it takes its place in a significant, mysterious narrative".

"Poems couples profound intellect with deeply felt emotion... a volume of intensely felt emotional truth, strengthened by intellectual rigor and haunting imagery." –Kirkus Reviews (starred review)