Sue Sinclair lived in New York city.
The world’s beauty is Sinclair’s subject in the philosophically large-scaled and perceptually acute Breaker. Organized into four cleanly named sections – Faith, Work, Leisure, and Sleep – Breaker is an account of the perceptor’s experience of beauty, which is nothing as simple as the occasional glimpse of a rose.
Her perception is acutely focused and rigorous; and she is acutely self-aware. She is not afraid of words::text like "beauty" or "being," yet, because of the intensity of her vision, she never uses them as clichés. Her gift for metaphor is astonishing and may remind some readers of the young Roo Borson.
"In these poems, ‘the world lifts its head/and clarity pours from its back.' The world-reading in Sue Sinclair's Breaker, the ontology of the book, is magical and feels deeply true.
All objects here exercise the power of a profound affective gravity; cities, islands, gardens and the savouring mind itself pull and accommodate the one who looks hard. Sinclair's poems shape us to be just this sort of fierce viewer. They have a moving, extraordinary facility to discern, taste, the sweet depths of things." - Tim Lilburn
Cover art: Photograph by Peter Sinclair
Sue Sinclair reads Joy from Breaker on Audioboo
Friday by Inkslinger, March 20, 2009 (The Overdecorated Bookcase blog)
Breaker by Sue Sinclair by Jay Ruzesky (Malahat Review # 167 - summer 2009)
Before the Threshold (Eclectica, April/May 2010)
The Last Three Poetry Books of my Year (The Literary Addict, November 16, 2008)