REVIEWS
”Through her use of language, the individual crafting of each poem, the attention to form and point of view, and the imagery and composition of her book, Ling has created something of a little masterpiece. This reviewer highly recommends Three Islands.”
—Prick of the Spindle
"Drawing on her own experience as an educator and her own creative mind, she crafts a work that blend the line between fantasy and reality. Three Islands is a unique collection that should not be ignored.”
—Midwest Book Review
"Everyone once in a while a poet comes along who successfully achieves a new and difficult approach to poetry. ... This book is highly recommended.”
—Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene
PRESS
Interview and story at Indiana Daily Student.
Profiled and interviewed by DePauw Magazine.
Story at Depauw University's website.
BLURBS
“With Three Islands, Micah Ling reaches a poetry pinnacle: a triad of poems which enacts rather than merely describes, journeys far rather than merely travels. For Ling, these voices—from Amelia Earhart, the Birdman of Alcatraz, and Fletcher Christian’s mutiny on the Bounty—are opportunities to explore the self stranded, lost, captured, and ultimately freed. Her poems are musical and filled with meaning, islands only in name. Hers is an archipelago of excellence—reader, I envy your first, but surely not your last, visit to these pages.”
—Kevin Young, author of Dear Darkness and Jelly Roll
“In Three Islands, Micah Ling straddles the difficult balance between researcher and poet. Out of wreckage and ruin, Ling revisits the lives of Fletcher Christian, Amelia Earhart, and Robert Stroud and inhabits the solitariness of her subjects without sentimentality. These luminous poems are deceptively plain, urgent, and brave.”
—Eugene Gloria, author of Hoodlum Birds and Drivers at the Short-Time Motel
“Ling has a gift for making you feel as if you were the one dreaming of birds outside your cell, flailing through the surf to Pitcairn Island, or toasting your broken airplane with coconut milk. Ling’s three unique but harmonious voices brilliantly portray human longing under the pressure of isolation.”
—Maura Stanton, author of Immortal Sofa and Snow on Snow
BACK COVER
Three Islands, Micah Ling’s first full-length collection, brings together the three colossal figures of Amelia Earhart, Robert Stroud (the Birdman of Alcatraz), and Fletcher Christian to examine the solitude and madness that comprises their slight degrees of separation. Existing in the channel between fact and fiction, these poems deftly swim among the slight nuances that divide captivity, isolation, and escape.
OTHER
Ling was a finalist for a 2010 Indiana Authors Award
Recorded for Indiana Public Media
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