SWALLOW
By Miranda Field
Houghton Mifflin; 64 pages; $12.00

In an unbroken line of tradition as critical to our nature as DNA, new poets appear even as others are passing away. They arrive from everywhere, unexpected, as if talent cannot give us a moment’s rest.

Miranda Field was born in London, received an MFA in poetry from Vermont College, and presently resides in New York City. In her first collection of poems, 2001 winner of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Bakeless Prize for Poetry, narrative sings an intoxicating song, "drawing the fly, the bee, / fireworm, the black pest / Phyloxera vastatrix / to visit the vine…." (p.10)

Field is equally at home in "wormholes, striations of the grain," (p.15) as she is in a subway car barreling through the grimy tunnel beneath New York’s streets, the train’s pulse projecting a "lit figure in a black space any eye can enter" (p.6) with jolting eroticism. Or drifting into the dream of a young girl whose "reflection yawns…in water lifted from the world / and dropped again," one who travels "several times toward the pool / forming and reforming her path," (p.36) Field’s language has a knack for taking unexpected turns. This is a voice erudite but evocative, always in control; maybe too sure of itself, even when brilliantly unwinding.

A premier of this caliber engenders a pact with its readers and its critics. One hopes that Field doesn’t falter under the pressure of expectation, as this book is not a tentative step, but a long stride toward an enduring contribution.

 © San Francisco Chronicle 2002