Undertow: Poems

Author: Alix Anne Shaw

Publisher: Persea (2008)

Winner of the 2007 Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Prize

This impressive debut is propelled by wanderlust, its music derived from the rumble of freight trains and the heave of ferries through literal and imaginative waterways. Whether set in Maine or in Arizona, in Ecuador or in Thailand, in waking or in dreaming, each poem resounds with the beauty and remoteness of its locality. Re-imaginings of travelogues by some notable explorers and naturalists, including Sir Walter Raleigh and Georg Eberhard Rumphius, underscore the collection's restless yearning for motion. Undertow marks the emergence of a distinctive new voice.