Prior to her stunning first novel, Anne Michaels had already won awards and critical acclaim for two books of poetry: The Weight of Oranges (1986), which won the Commonwealth Prize for the Americas, and Miner's Pond (1991), which received the Canadian Authors Association Award and was short-listed for the Governor General's Award and the Trillium Award. Although they were published separately, these two books, along with Skin Divers, a collection of Michaels's newest work, were written as companion volumes.

Poems brings all three books together for the first time, creating for American readers a wonderful introduction to Anne Michaels's poetry. Meditative and insightful, powerful and heart-moving, these are poems that, as Michael Ondaatje has written, "go way beyond games or fashion or politics . . . They represent the human being entire."