Body of Water

With mercurial wands, Baal’s angels, decks with wild Jacks of oracle bones, tempest Serpens, Lord Byron on the Bridge of Sighs, stallions mottled grey, a “dark blue stronger than the Flemish blue of hummingbirds,” and poesis lying in the ashes of a dress, Janet Hamill turns her wizard poet’s eye on an immense body of alchemical empathies. This book is a romantic, surreal, lyrical Voyage. It twists and turns with the playful tide of poetic vision, enhanced by the delicate measures of Patti Smith’s photography. Kudos all around.

—Anne Waldman

Reading Janet Hamill now, as I have over the last thirty years, I’m amazed again at the particulars of the world her poetry makes—a night world, as I read it, peopled with bright creatures and splashes of color, beautiful and terrifying by turns. With this there is a mix, too, of pop forms and strains, and of catholic and pagan names and images—angels and saints and hermits—as in the vision of her sleeping gypsy: “firebird sweets / a morsel a taste of carrion / . . . as in a dream.” With this and much more, she has become indispensable.

—Jerome Rothenberg

With its unbridled surrealistic, hypnotic imagery, Janet Hamill’s alchemy of language gives us back communion with our souls. With a magician’s grace she reminds us of the enchantment of our being. Hers is a music both modern and magik.

—Maureen Owen

. . . Janet Hamill has sought transcendence in language on the page or sung . . . Hamill’s mastery of form and feeling comes together to create a poem that delicately examines celebrity, gallantry, silence, talent, and beauty. Only a poet could do that. Or maybe only Janet Hamill.

—Patricia Spears Jones