Eye of Water

In Eye of Water Amber Flora Thomas has written one of her generation's best first books. 'We are invented / by what we let pass through us,' Thomas says, and a sensory world passes through her poems-regal, yet warm, majestic and domestic, sophisticated, emotional, and wise. Intensely crafted, Thomas's poems thrive on multiple levels of truths in myriad angles. They are literally dazzling. Thomas makes a breathtaking debut with this collection.

'We are invented/by what we let pass through us,' says Amber Flora Thomas. Just so, the world is invented anew as it passes through this poet's wryly fixed and clear eye, to be returned to us via the poet's decidedly original voice, as it sings to us of that incidental landscape, the body-the body as it routinely 'betrays its own purpose.' And we forgive it, we trust in it again. Which is to say this is also a book about faith and the human struggle for it. An impressive debut.

One of the most remarkable things about 'Eye of Water' [is] a harmonic counterpoint betwween beauty and violence. Deserves all the praise one can offer and more.

Thomas' poetry doesn't just awaken our sensory perceptions. It pries them open mercilessly and we are left reeling, reborn into what feels like a brand new world with objects that we have never experienced. . . We can't help but be grateful—because [Thomas] has arrived onto the poetry scene.

Highly polished and accomplished, an elegiac work that has the knowing tone of an old master. A remarkably self-assured first collection.

Amber Flora Thomas is simply amazing. She captures the natural with incredible vision and clarity, vivacity and almost clairvoyance.