Description:
Reading Anatomy of the Eclipse feels revelatory-like deciphering coded
messages smuggled across enemy lines off ering sustenance to those
under siege. Ellen Hinsey gives voice to the duality of silence, both its
power and its danger, a foreboding hush before, and a shrouding veil
after political violence, genocide and territorial confl icts. Oracular and
oblique, the poems tease us to the limits of thought, making us feel the
vastness on the other side of all we don't know about ourselves and our
world. With elegant precision and a sweeping narrative arc irrevocably
linking past with present and future, Hinsey's poems invite us to bear
witness alongside her, to listen and observe: "Is there a witness for this
daybreak that drags forward/ its incurable news?" Rich in aural refrains,
the poems create a soundscape in which mankind's "vast/ Archive of
terror" echoes across time and space, quickening something in us,
something prior and utterly secure, an aspect of being unintimidated
by the portents of darkness descending. We've been here before, too
often. Acknowledging that "the predatory Past circles back," we may better
pursue a future supported by the ancient virtues of dignity, patience
and endurance: "For like the eternal/ plague seasons: the trial of its fever hour
too shall pass." By forcing us to slow down and let the mind linger, her
poems brace, embrace. and fortify.