A remarkable new collection by one of this country’s best-loved poets.
White lies, hip replacements and ballet with a sawhorse. Parisian drycleaners and the brush of the grass in Central Park. In My American Chair, Elizabeth Smither leads us through serendipitous encounters, the uncanny in the ordinary, the intricacies of friendship and ruminations on mortality. Assured, intimate, witty, revealing – this is a poetry collection to treasure from one of our most beloved voices.
When you purchase them you must allow –
five stems, fifteen buds, only two half-
open – for their circumference to come
flouncing, bowing, bending in two days’ time
like fifteen girls who have changed into
white debutante dresses or five women
who have danced all night and come home with the milkman.
— ‘The white lilies open’
