Drawing Water

Poetry. 'When white is well managed, it ought to be strange, ' writes Eva Heisler in her brilliant new hybrid collection DRAWING WATER. Here narrative falls away, replaced by repetition, which creates both music and color. DRAWING WATER is a meditation on the significance of the line in both poetry and visual art. 'The right hand margin / is profile-- / is oar-- / is brink.' Each page functions as a poem or image that challenges convention: 'What I learned from Matisse's black-- / to creep downstairs in the middle of the night and exchange blue silk for black wool.' Writing as both poet and art critic, Heisler captures the tension between innovation and history that informs 'two experiences of time: the random glitter of / unmeasured minutes; the geometry of schedules.'--Carol Guess

Not since Marguerite Duras's Writing or Maggie Nelson's BLUETS have I been so excited by a new book, but Eva Heisler's DRAWING WATER has done it, has entered my 'heart line / fate line / life line.' It is a book for the back pocket, for a train ride or a rainy weekend, the kind of book that complements staring out a window at the changing landscape--shifting scenes sliding by, tiny beads of rain refracting light. Make no mistake: when Eva Heisler breaks a line she breaks a heart, just 'as the sea / breaks at our back door.' And throughout, her touch is as delicate as if she has been 'drawing the wing on a fly, ' and the result is as mighty and 'broad as the breast of a hero.'--Molly Gaudry