The Quick

This collection encompasses a striking variety of subjects. Sail reflects on detail in the natural world, both in micro- and macrocosms, looking, for example, at flowers, birds, the sea, and the earth seen from space; he explores the intricacies and balances of love and family relationships; he finds new resonances in the paintings of David Bomberg, Howard Hodgkin, and Paul Klee, and affinities in his translations of Mallarme, Rilke, and Trakl. His imaginative scope extends into a sequence of prose poems responding powerfully to Gabriel Faur's nine Preludes for piano.