The If Borderlands

Book excerpt: The first collection of poems spanning the beloved Canadian poet's short but dazzling career. Elise Partridge’s poetry has been widely admired for its scrupulous truth to life and meticulous, glittering craft. Whether writing about family and friends, the natural world and the daily round, or serious illness, Partridge was, as Rosanna Warren has said, “a poet of brilliant precisions. Each line represents a new, glinting angle of thought. . . . The result is an art of eerie compassion and an almost hyper-realist perception of the small.” This new collection includes all the poems that Partridge prepared for publication during her lifetime as well as a selection of uncollected or unpublished poems.