Standing Water: Poems

"Triggered by the sight of Rodin’s Head of Sorrow — featured hugely on the front cover — the narrative epic coursing through Eleanor Chai’s Standing Water gives us an autobiographical genesis story with all the gravity and composure of a lake at dusk. With the calm, near-religious introspection found in the poetry of Dorothy Richardson or Virginia Woolf, Standing Water is solipsism made exquisitely tangible. Throughout, the verse seems to sigh itself loose from the pages of the collection and scent the air surrounding the reader — now somehow moist, misty and serene."