Infinite Gradation

By Anne Michaels

Infinite Gradation is an astonishing meditation on the mystery at the heart of our mortality. In lines as precise and profound as any Michaels has written, Infinite Gradation movingly explores the nature of responsibility in extremis and the forms it takes—it is about hope in art, what art makes of death, and bears witness to the love and lives of visual artists and writers who have made work at the limits of experience.Infinite Gradation finds its way to a most powerful solace. (Michaels embraces mortality through three great artists, recently dead, who were her confidants: the sculptor Eva Hesse, the painter Jack Chambers, and Claire Wilks, print maker and sculptor.)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: May 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9781550967753

Anne Michaels

Anne Michaels is a novelist and poet. Her books are translated into more than fifty languages and have won dozens of international awards, including the Orange Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, and the Lannan Award for Fiction. Among many other honours she is a Guggenheim Fellow, has received honorary degrees, and has served as Toronto's Poet Laureate. Her novel Fugitive Pieces was adapted as a feature film. Her most recent books include All We Saw, Infinite Gradation and Railtracks (co-written with John Berger). In 2020, her novel Fugitive Pieces was chosen as one of the BBC's 100 Novels that Shaped the World.

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In the electronic versions of this book blank pages that appear in the paperback have been removed.

Anne Michaels is a novelist and a poet. Her books have been translated into more than forty-five languages and have won dozens of international awards, including the Orange Prize, the Guardian Fiction Award and the Lannan Award for Fiction. Her novel Fugitive Pieces was adapted as a feature film. She is Toronto’s Poet Laureate.

Other books by Anne Michaels

Poetry

The Weight of Oranges

Miner’s Pond

Skin Divers

Poems

Correspondences

All We Saw

Fiction

Fugitive Pieces

The Winter Vault

Theatre

Railtracks ( with John Berger)

For Children

The Adventures of Miss Petitfour

ANNE MICHAELS

INFINITE GRADATION

Fiction, Poetry, Non-fiction, Translation, Drama and Graphic Books

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Michaels, Anne, 1958-, author

Infinite gradation / Anne Michaels.

Previously published: Hackney, London, England: House Sparrow Press, 2017.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-55096-774-6 (softcover).--ISBN 978-1-55096-775-3 (EPUB).--

ISBN 978-1-55096-776-0 (Kindle).--ISBN 978-1-55096-777-7 (PDF)

I. Title.

PS8576.I169I54 2018 C814'.54 C2018-900941-1 / C2018-900942-X

Copyright © Anne Michaels, 2018

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We gratefully acknowledge, for their support toward our publishing activities, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

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CONTENTS

COVER

INFINITE GRADATION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A NOTE ON THE TEXT BY GARETH EVANS

for

John Berger

Mark Strand

Rosalind Michaels

and for

Gareth Evans

The stillness between silence and

muteness.

The last weeks and hours before the

imminent death of one we love – a time

of desire so