Immersion, a book of poems by Michele Wolf, will surprise you. Selected by Denise Duhamel as part of the Hilary Tham Capital Collection, it is a book of relationships, between mother and daughter, young lovers, adopted child and parents, cultural differences and moral decisions. Wolf treats life-altering choices with the ease of language, so that readers can taste their complexities.
The surprises come in the way Wolf handles difficult subjects with a bit of humor. "Skin" is a wonderful example of this: a romantic make-believe idea for a young girl looks like a racial identity issue to her mother. The poem doesn't preach; it shows, with a touch of lightness.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, "Daughter" is a manifesto of sorts, very moving, very powerful. The reader knows what the overall theme of the book is, but there is no monotony in these pages. Every poem is delightfully unexpected, pulling the reader into the next poem, to see what else makes itself known. There is a well-maintained confidence in their vulnerabilities.
The poems are nicely crafted, tight with economy of words, and they only get better as the pages turn. In this book Wolf has opened herself up to her readers, and provided them with a better sense of their own family belief system.
Immersion is 73 pages, and published by The Word Works. To order a copy, go to www.wordworksbooks.org/books2.html#immersion.
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