In her new volume of verse, Bowering continues her rigorous, ambitious path and delivers poems that blend a variety of personalities, times, and places that add up to an overall substance she sees as happiness. Like an alchemist of old, she transmutes experiences, perceptions, and perspectives into something richer and rarer despite the passage of years and the loss and death they have brought.
The psalms are among the most sublime poetry in the world, offering us inexhaustible wells of meaning. Herbert O'Driscoll adeptly dips into their sacred depths and draws up sparkling insights to refresh the soul. Our contemporary spirits can feel at home in the world of psalms. All of human experience is there – joy and sadness, love and anger, trust and despair. The gift of the psalms lies in their challenge to us; they invite us into dialogue with them and with the God who inspired them....
Actress Mae West once said «I've been things and seen places.» Poet Douglas Burnet Smith might well be able to lay claim to the same boast. In his latest collection of verse he takes the reader on a kaleidoscopic journey through Amsterdam's antique streets and canals, Tuscany's sun-soaked landscapes, Paris's Gallic gabble of monuments and madcaps, and the title poem's Finnish auditory and aural delights. In one poem we play Scrabble with Dadaist Tristan Tzara. In another...
Of one of Mark Frutkin's previous books of verse, Poetry Canada Review said it provided «a supernatural fusion of the earthbound with the heavenly to forge the lightning of poetry.» Divided into two sections, one inspired by ancient Chinese art, the other limning the ambiguities and incongruities of the contemporary human condition, Frutkin's new volume of poetry, Iron Mountain, often presents human beings wandering in the wilderness between two abysses while still appreciating the...
Peter Jailall continues his search for the place called home in his third volume of poetry, exploring the «open, dangerous» landscape of a post-September 11th world. In this climate of globalization, none are untouched by the threats of terrorism or the spoils of modernization and its effect on our environment. As poet, teacher and storyteller, Peter’s unique gift for the blending of language – from Caribbean-accented English to Hindi – allows him to paint beautiful dichotomies between the...
In Purity of Absence, Dave Margoshes explores love in its waxing and waning, the extravagance of its fullness, the agony of its departure. Like an explorer charting new territory, he casts his eye on the rhythms and syntax of love, observing its aspects both quotidian and rare. The poems in this new collection, Margoshes’s first in a decade, chart the ekg patterns of love, not just the mature love between a man and a woman but love for a parent, friends, knowledge, place and, ultimately, life...
Naturalist, ornithologist, avocational archaeologist and poet, Winnipeg’s Dr. Robert W. Nero has authored nine books dealing with his amazing spectrum of interests. Growing Old Together is the newest collection of poetry by this gifted writer, revealing his sensitivity and keen observation of the natural world. In his frequently passionate poetry Nero pays tribute to his wife, Ruth, who has, over many years, encouraged Bob to write and to pursue his outdoor interests – all the while sharing him...
Poetry or potsherds? That’s the surprising dilemma one of Canada’s well-known nature writers confronts in The Site: A Personal Odyssey , a highly personalized account of a lifetime’s involvement as an avocational archaeologist. With deft descriptive powers, Robert Nero leads us gently into this new facet of his amazing spectrum of interests. Not unexpectedly, there even is poetry in his approach to studying prehistoric remains! From childhood through adolescence, to wartime service with the...
Like the shifting and often turbulent skies of our own emotional meteorology, Rhonda Batchelor's poems forecast the shifting patterns of a marriage from quiet moments of a graceful dawn to stormy seas of absence, from brilliant love-strewn sunshowers to dark moments of loss and bitter nights upon the shore. In three sections, «Backbone of the Moon», «Ghostly Dialogues» and «Still Breathing», Batchelor explores the fleeting forever trilogy of expectations, unions and releases that comprise...