Your Skin Is a Country: Inventions on the Life of Maria Mitchell: New American Poetry; 2

'To live on this continent exhilarates me,' announces Nora Mitchell early in this book; then she goes on to prove it. Her passionate voice sounds like Whitman out of breath, writing in gaspingly brief lines; she seems deeply in love with everything she sees, everyone who touches her. Every experience--driving at dawn or watching Korean pearl divers--is read as transcendently meaningful. Mitchell never slides into the maudlin or bathetic; she shows too much emotional integrity for that. Passion like this is rare and exhilarating. --Booklist