At the Hour of the Eclipse

Reading Anatomy of the Eclipse feels revelatory-like deciphering coded

messages smuggled across enemy lines off ering sustenance to those

under siege. Ellen Hinsey gives voice to the duality of silence, both its

power and its danger, a foreboding hush before, and a shrouding veil

after political violence, genocide and territorial confl icts. Oracular and

oblique, the poems tease us to the limits of thought, making us feel the

vastness on the other side of all we don't know about ourselves and our

world. With elegant precision and a sweeping narrative arc irrevocably

linking past with present and future, Hinsey's poems invite us to bear

witness alongside her, to listen and observe: "Is there a witness for this

daybreak that drags forward/ its incurable news?" Rich in aural refrains,

the poems create a soundscape in which mankind's "vast/ Archive of

terror" echoes across time and space, quickening something in us,

something prior and utterly secure, an aspect of being unintimidated

by the portents of darkness descending. We've been here before, too

often. Acknowledging that "the predatory Past circles back," we may better

pursue a future supported by the ancient virtues of dignity, patience

and endurance: "For like the eternal/ plague seasons: the trial of its fever hour

too shall pass." By forcing us to slow down and let the mind linger, her

poems brace, embrace. and fortify.