Keynote
“Hamilton is able to sustain a complex narrative through stripped-down poems . . . leavened by a wry humor.”—The New York Times Book Review
Book Title
Corridor
Subtitle
Poems
Cover Image
- "Movement and transition resonate in [Corridor]."—PBS NewsHour
Poem Excerpt
I wanted to read an essay in your wrist.
The afternoon seemed endless. Out the window,
a lane to the right was bending away,
taking with it the figure moving down it.
Alone for a quarter of an hour,
looking in, plotting the argument,
all the marks of lucidity
and brevity in that attempt,
that benefit of rhetoric:
the true but unlikely moment.
—from “Summered”
The afternoon seemed endless. Out the window,
a lane to the right was bending away,
taking with it the figure moving down it.
Alone for a quarter of an hour,
looking in, plotting the argument,
all the marks of lucidity
and brevity in that attempt,
that benefit of rhetoric:
the true but unlikely moment.
—from “Summered”
Body
Corridor, Saskia Hamilton’s third collection, is a study of motion and time. Its glanced landscapes, its lives seen in passing, render the immeasurable in broken narratives. These poems are succinct in order to travel quickly—they have unexpected distances within their reach. They are dauntless and alert in their apprehension of the natural kingdom at the frontier of so many unnatural ones. And they inhabit the realm of contemplation which, for Hamilton, is charged with eros.
“Hamilton’s writing has been called spare and delicate, but neither of these quite gets at the effect of her poems, which are delicate only in the way a suspension bridge is: neither is marked by unnecessary ornament or fragility, and it would be a mistake to regard either as anything other than rigorously tough.”—Raymond McDaniel, Boston Review
“Hamilton’s writing has been called spare and delicate, but neither of these quite gets at the effect of her poems, which are delicate only in the way a suspension bridge is: neither is marked by unnecessary ornament or fragility, and it would be a mistake to regard either as anything other than rigorously tough.”—Raymond McDaniel, Boston Review
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About the Author
Credit: Jacqueline Mia Foster
Praise
- “There is much to be discovered in this collection. . . . In Corridor, Saskia Hamilton displays a breadth of historical, poetical, and linguistic awareness I rarely find.”—The Rumpus
- “[Hamilton] takes the rusted machinery of the world and makes it beautiful.”—Washington Independent Review of Books
- “In these intensely crafted poems, Hamilton explores themes of place and the delicate relationship of humans and nature. . . . These poems are beautifully resonant.”—New Pages
- “Hamilton delivers a collection of deceptively brief, lean poems. . . . [T]here is always a studied lack of clarity that gives the collection an irresistible tension.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
