The prose in the essays in Sightlines shows why Kathleen Jamie (The Overhaul) is one of the United Kingdom's most renowned poets. Her knack for finding deep meaning in details many people would consider too ordinary for exploration--and doing so in a precise, sophisticated, yet informal voice--shines through in this exploration of Scotland, lands farther north and the confines of the human body.
Jamie's meditations invite the reader to linger and ponder, as when the excavation of a "henge," an archeological site featuring standing stones, causes her to muse, "You are placed in landscape, you are placed in time. But within that, there's a bit of room to manoeuvre." Her pitch-perfect metaphors make this a work to be savored rather than gulped as she puts words to feelings that usually beggar description, such as the day following her mother's death: "The days following such a death, when death is a release rather than a disaster, have a high, glassy feel, as though a note was being sung just too high to hear."
Each essay opens with a black-and-white photograph that pertains to its subject, including images of a prehistoric tomb, two seabirds soaring above their colony, even a cluster of giardia parasites invading a small intestine. Despite the varied topics, though, Jamie holds to her central tenet: we are in nature, and nature is also in us. --Jaclyn Fulwood, youth services manager at Latah County Library District and blogger at Infinite Reads