Letters to the Tremulous Hand

Book excerpt: Elizabeth Campbell's poems always seem daimonic, running along an edge of surprise. They are in fact written very slowly, sculpted to a dense inner clarity. It helps that she is a master of the rhythms of free-verse lines, their questings, turns, and landings. She explores the mind's readiness both to misconceive and ti find a solid world. Her poems are full of tangible objects yielding significance, whether the theme is travelling, singing, dreams, or sacred or secular love - or a recurrent observation of horses: their physical presence, and the veering of their barely graspable consciousness. The ten poems of the title sequence, addressed to a little-known-about medieval scribe, scrupulously view the smallness of the leavings of lives underlying history. These are a remarkable meditation on thinking and solitude.