A Clearance

"In this long-awaited and masterful debut, Fiona Wilson gives us astonishing and uncommon poems that may have emerged from the Scottish and American traditions but can be found somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic, while her readers come 'to the edge of a question' by either shore. Wilson's formal brilliance is all worked through with chagrin, wit, and modesty. The mind at play in these poems is thrilled, distracted, enchanted by the feeling of words in the mouth--the mustardy 'sonsy,' the gray wet velvet of 'mizzle,' the scandal of 'cramasie'--and by slips and turns of phrase, which she turns over like stones, like coins, as they become talismanic--to console, perhaps, as if the secret to transformation were to be found in language itself."--Saskia Hamilton