Crow Genesis

In Thomas Mitchell's new collection, paper boats drift in and out of childhood, a red bicycle negotiates the dangerous edges of a neighborhood, voices travel on the wings of swallows. Crows transform in a strange metamorphosis, assume human characteristics and emotions, create their own litany, succeed and fail in love, bemoan the onset of old age. Through an ever-widening range of vision, Mitchell chooses not to withdraw from the world, but to engage with it. Again and again, he reels us in, grounds us in reality, the authentic, as in "Measuring Absence" when he acknowledges the misconception that I can recreate the night by using words. These poems emerge with a musicality, a precision, that offers a persuasive affirmation of what it means to know ourselves, and to recognize the magic that appears all around us.