Cardinal Points
"Combining incisive observation with vivid imagery, Pettit builds this volume, winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize, around the leitmotif of flight, both actual and symbolic…Those poems not directly concerned with flight focus on motion—physical, spiritual or emotional—as a metaphor for the human condition, which Pettit views as being in a constant state of flux. [His work] is always well-crafted, moving and highly imaginative."—Publishers Weekly
"Pettit's second volume records quiet, deft observations of the everyday—to which he is not reticent to add a surrealistic tinge or twist…A faultless collection by a younger voice in U.S. poetry."—Booklist
"Pettit's poetry emphatically points us east, south, west, and north, and whenever his vivid portraits of the outside world succeed in carrying us inward, we soon discover there a 'world where the angels come down to us,' a world this poet insists on reaching for and offering like alms to his readers, a world of individual transcendence."—New Orleans Times-Picayune
In the congestion of contemporary American poetry, Michael Pettit's work stands out for its clarity of vision and strong sense of humanity. This is his second book of poems, once again informed by his photographic eye and his ear for authentic sounds.
Strung throughout the book are poems based on the Scottish photographer Eadweard Muybridge's Animal Locomotion, a historic photographic document. Pettit uses these pioneering images as the basis for his poetic dreaming, and the result is a poignant, integrated sequence of highly moving poems, studded between other vivid lyrics.
The dominant motif is motion: the physical, emotional, and imaginative movement of various figures is presented through the flow of language. It is a broad subject, incorporating elements such as memory, visions of the future, and the unexpected turns that mind, life, or speech can take. All signs serve as signs of the human spirit, which Pettit celebrates with supple, resonant language. The long title poem that concludes the book is a cosmography for his daughter, a gift of faith in the face of the sometimes dark motions of the spirit found elsewhere in the book.