Literary studies: poetry and poets Books

Book Synopsis The first anthology to focus on the rich tradition of Canadian nature poetry in English, Open Wide a Wilderness is a survey of Canada's regions, poetries, histories, and peoples as these relate to the natural world. The poetic responses included here range from the heights of the sublime to detailed naturalist observation, from the perspectives of pioneers and those who work in the woods and on the sea to the dismayed witnesses of ecological destruction, from a sense of terror in confrontation with the natural world to expressions of amazement and delight at the beauty and strangeness of nature, our home. Arranged chronologically, the poems include excerpts from late-eighteenth-century colonial pioneer epics and selections from both well-known and more obscure nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers. A substantial section is devoted to contemporary writers who are working within and creating a new ecopoetic aesthetic in the early twenty-first century. Don McKay's introductory essay, ""Great Flint Singing,"" explores in McKay's inimitable way the thorny issues of Canadian poets' representations of nature over the past 150 years. Focusing on key texts by Duncan Campbell Scott, Charles G.D. Roberts, Earle Birney, Dennis Lee, and others, the essay traces Wordsworthian influences in a New World context, celebrates Canadian poets' love of natural history observation, and finds a way through a rich and contradictory tradition to current trends in ecopoetics. Trade Review"Two of the best-known ideas of what is distinctive, what is Canadian, about Canadian literature involve 'our' relationship to nature, or more specifically, to 'wilderness.' Margaret Atwood said CanLit was about survival, that the Canadian identity which seeks to survive in the shadow of American cultural dominance has its roots in the struggle of early settlers to stay alive in a harsh, unfamiliar landscape. Northrop Frye projected his own terror of the wilderness onto all he read, and decided that we Canadians were all about hunkering down and fending off cruel nature: the garrison mentality. So it is surprising that, until now, no one has ever put together a collection of Canadian nature poetry. An important new anthology, Open Wide a Wilderness, is the first such collection." - Sonnet L'Abbé, The Globe & Mail, July 2009``Nancy Holmes...is to be congratulated.... This beautiful anthology begins hugging you very quickly. Read Open Wide a Wilderness for refreshment and discovery, for epic journeys into the minds of insects and the lives of flowers, to rejoin your totems and familiars, and to rekindle your resolve to continue the good fight. Keep it close at hand in case you wake up lonely at night--and when you crave solitude. Read the poems aloud to your friends and sing them to the river.'' -- Greg Michalenko, University of Waterloo -- Alternatives, Vol. 36 no. 4, 201007``Nancy Holmes, the editor of this, the first anthology of Canadian nature poetry...has risen marvellously to the challenge of sifting through over 200 years of Canadian poetry to produce a collection that proves both fresh and familiar, revisiting the poems of early settlement and introducing the eco-poetry of the present generation.'' -- Linda Knowles -- British Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 24, #1, 2011, 201110``With 192 poets and almost 300 poems, this `first-ever survey of Canadian nature poetry' is a welcome resource for exploring a feature of the Canadian literary imagination that was once considered central to Canadian national identity. Demographic developments in the country since WWII have `heterogenized' any such identity, and many of the works Holmes (Univ. of British Columbia, Okanagan) selected specifically reflect changes in `the rural-urban interface' that have transformed Canadian society and culture.... McKay's introductory essay, `Great Flint Singing'...is sure to be much analyzed and debated by critics.... Highly recommended.'' -- D.R. McCarthy, Huron University College -- CHOICE, March 2010, 201004``If Canadians have a cultural inferiority complex, it is not on display in Nancy Holmes's anthology. This 'first-ever survey of Canadian nature poetry' surprises with its belatedness and impresses with its ambition: two hundred poets appear, spanning the years 1789-2008.... This anthology deservces a place on every ecocritic's booksheld.... Holmes arranges her selections chronologically by author's date of birth, tracing a historical trajectory while placing poets amongst their (often lesser-known) contemporaries. So Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje, for example, take their place among a generation of influentical poets little-known beyond Canada's borders, including Daphne Marlatt, Don McKay, Gwendolyn MacEwen, Dennis Lee, John Newlove, John Thompson, and Pat Lowther. Holmes does a wonderful job surrounding these poets, whose work encompasses the collection's core, with colonial, Confederation-era, and Modernist predecessors, and with post-Nationalist, postmodern, postcolonial, and other recent poets, both obscure and celebrated. Though formally avant-garde work is largely absent, challenging ideas about `nature' and `wilderness' are not. The paratext assembled by Holmes establishes her anthology's value as a critical and teaching resource. In addition to brief author bios, she provides a subject index enabling searches for poems about diverse topics such as pioneers, roadkill, birdwatching, canoes, language, mining, rivers, science, individual flora and fauna, and wilderness. Holmes's editorial work is introduced by fellow poet Don McKay's essay, `Great Flint Singing.' Avuncular, witty, and erudite, McKay (easily Canada's most respected living eco-poet) provides an overview of Canadian nature poetry while at the same time arguing for its national, global, and environmental relevance.... The beauty of this anthology is that readers can test McKay's claims for themselves by dipping into the rich tradition of nature poetry that Holmes has carefully gathered from a wilderness of options.'' -- Travis V. Mason, Dalhousie University -- Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, February 2011, 201101

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Book Synopsis ""On strands of light I am hanging poetry like garlands."" These first words of poetry from Nicole Brossard anticipate the vast body of work she has published in the last four decades. The poems in Mobility of Light were chosen by Louise H. Forsyth to elicit a sense of these whirling garlands and convey the intense energy - physical, creative, spiritual, erotic, imaginative, playful, ethical, and political - that has carried Brossard to a uniquely significant vision of the human spirit. Poems are presented in French and English on facing pages, underscoring the density of meaning in each word and line and highlighting the unusual rhythms in Brossard's originals and the extraordinary sonorities with which they beat. Some of the translations in this volume have been previously published, while others are new. In her afterword, Brossard talks about travelling back in time to discover how our most vivid sensations, emotions, and thoughts are nourished and transformed by our enigmatic relation to language. Trade Review``As American poet Anne Waldman usefully asks, 'And what to make of [poetry]? "Do" with it? "Do" anything? Is it part of the poet's vow to perpetually catch, distill, refine, re-imagine where one walks, what one notices?' I can't answer for all poets here. As a teacher, however, I can say that yes, it is our vow as instructors to show students how poetry perpetually catches, distills, refines, and re-imagines our selves and our worlds. I agree with Neil Besner, general editor of Wilfrid Laurier Press, that what we 'do' with poetry starts with our students. We need to attend more carefully to what poetry we teach as well as how we teach it. I thus applaud the efforts of the Laurier Poetry Series, which, with the hopes of creating and sustaining 'the larger readership that contemporary Canadian poetry so richly deserves,' has been publishing 'useful, engaging, and comprehensive introductions' to the life's work of major Canadian poets. Each of these volumes includes 35 poems selected and introduced by a critic, followed by an afterword by the poet. The volumes are intended, Besner argues, to make the connections between the life and the work more accessible to a 'general' reader ('Foreword'). ``Besner's eloquent, timely, and practical arguments remind me of Lyn Hejinian's belief that our poetic revolutions will always be 'local, particular, and temporary,' but are nonetheless undiminished. Let us consider what poetry is doing in the world. Let us consider how Laurier's texts differ, as Besner argues in their intent, from the conventional anthology and whether they in fact demonstrate the relevance of poetry to a life. Let us consider, for example, how in the Laurier Poetry Series' most recent collections, Mobility of Light: The Poetry of Nicole Brossard and Fierce Departures: The Poetry of Dionne Brand, we might understand what it means to live. Let us think about how, through poetry, we can re-imagine who we are as well as the world we walk through.'' -- Emily Carr -- ARC Poetry Magazine, Winter 2010, 201001``The quest for a wider audience for poetry may be quixotic, but this series makes a serious attempt to present attractive, affordable selections that speak to contemporary interests and topics that might engage a younger generation of readers. Yet it does not condescend, preferring to provide substantial and sophisticated poets to these new readers. At the very least, these slim volumes will make very useful introductory teaching texts in post-secondary classrooms because they whet the appetite without overwhelming.'' -- Paul Milton -- Canadian Literature, 193, Summer 2007, 201003``Wilfrid Laurier University Press continues its stellar Laurier Poetry Series with this much anticipated volume. They could not have picked a better person than Louise H. Forsyth as its author, Forsyth having edited the definitive work on Brossard, Essays on her Work (Guernica Editions, 2005).... Forsyth has done an amazing job. One of the pleasures of this collection is to see the original French alongside the English translation.... Forsyth has been extremely judicious in her selection of poems in Mobility of Light. They capture all the characteristics for which Brossard has become known. This is an excellent representative sample of fifty years of Brossard--a daunting task rendered exquisitely.'' -- John Herbert Cunningham -- Prairie Fire, 201004Table of Contents Mobility of Light: The Poetry of Nicole Brossard selected with an introduction by Louis H. Forsyth Foreword Neil Besner Biographical Note Introduction Louise H. Forsyth Aube à la saison / ""Season Dawning"" Sur fil de lumière On strands of light Mordre en sa chair / ""Biting in the Flesh"" La loi du muscle Muscle's Law L'écho bouge beau / ""Echo Budges Beautiful"" neutre le monde m'enveloppe neutre neutral the world envelops me neutral écoute plutôt paisiblement l'écorce craquer listen quite peacefully to the crust cracking Suite logique / ""Suite logic"" en ces temps opaques in those opaque times entre code et code between code and code suspension de lacte action suspended Le centre blanc / ""The White Centre"" IV. le mot vertige IV. the word vertigo V. attentive au silence V. attentive to the silence Mécanique jongleuse, suivi de Masculin grammaticale / Daydream Mechanics. Masculine Singular son désir l'explore her desire explores her verte vague sur le ventre sur l'échine green billows on the belly on the spine La partie pour le tout / ""The Part for the Whole"" je prends la page par le côté incertain I dive into the page through the uncertain side L'amèr ou le chapitre effrité / These Our Mothers Or: The Disintegrating Chapter Le corps des mères enlacées The bodies of mothers entwined Amantes / Lovhers quelque part toujours un énoncé somewhere always a statement selon les années de la réalité according to the years of reality « la splendeur » dit O. ""the splendour,"" said O. « la science » dit Xa. ""science"" says Xa. MA continent MY continent Marginal Way / ""Marginal Way"" l'intention la beauté extrême intention extreme beauty ce n'est pas familier dans l'ombre it's not familiar in shadow si dans l'ombre je pense à la passion if in shadow I think of passion L'aviva / Aviva l'aviva (l'aviva son visage et les relais) aviva (aviva a face and the relaying) l'en suite traduite (l'anima l'image et les effets) the latest translated (anima image and effects) l'aviva (car l'aviva, l'attisa lève le voile) aviva (for the aviva, stirred her lifts the veil) l'en suite traduite (car voilà que lèvres encore d'elle) the latest translated (for here that lips still hers) À tout regard / ""If"" Si sismal If Yes Seismal Installations / Installations Réalité Reality Langue Tongue Installation Installation Contemporain Contemporary Langues obscures / ""Obscure Tongues"" Je m'intéresse à la connaissance I indulge in knowledge Je m'intéresse à la connaissance I indulge in knowledge La nuit verte du Parc Labyrinthe. Green Night of Labyrinth Park. La noche verde del Parque Laberinto entre l'histoire bordée de visions between history framed in visions Vertige de l'avant-scène / ""Downstage Vertigo"" fait de langue tourmente fact of tongue torments une fois reproduites dans la langue once reproduced in language une façon de se jeter sur le lit a way of flopping on the bed Au présent des veines / ""Coursing through the Veins"" ce sont toujours les miêmes mots they are always the same words La matière heureuse manoeuvre encore, in Auprésent des veines / ""Harmonious Matter Is Still Manoeuvring"" aujourd'hui je sais que la structure today I know that the deepest blue structure Musée de l'os et de l'eau / Museum of Bone and Water Théâtre: vitesse d'eau Theatre. Speed of Water ce soir si tu rapproches ton visage tonight if you lean your face close Le présent n'est pas un livre The Present Is Not a Book Le silence de l'hibiscus The Silence of the Hibiscus Je m'en vais à Trieste / ""I'm Leaving for Trieste"" Wanuskewin Wanuskewin Hôtel Clarendon Hotel Clarendon Ogunquit Ogunquit Cahier de roses et de civilisation. Écritures 2 / Notebook of Roses and Civilization Suggestions le coeur serré Suggestions Heavy-Hearted Soft Link 2 Soft Link 2 dans le temps facile et bleu in a time blue and easy Shadow: Soft et Soif, in Ardeur / Shadow Soft et Soif tiens-toi bien dans le silence hold on in silence Après les mots / ""After Words"" Le dos indocile des mots The Indocile Back of Words Le dos indocile des mots The Indocile Back of Words Postface Afterword Nicole Brossard Acknowledgements

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Book SynopsisTom Wayman's poetry has been published around the world to great acclaim. Wayman is one of Canada's most prolific and public poets, and his writing since the 1960s has been by turns angry, engaged, hopeful, tender, and hilarious. His voice and persona are his alone but simultaneously ours too. His recurring themes - work, mortality, love, lust, friendship, the natural world - make his work a poetry of human inevitabilities, a poetry that exults in the inevitability of seeing poetry in the everyday. Wayman's craft is poïesis (from the Ancient Greek ""to make"") - making a change, making a difference, making a ruckus, making the most of our time. His working life has always been inextricable from his writing one; his poems offer an honest and candid consideration of the ideological underpinnings, practical realities, and subtle beauties of a life lived on job sites and picket lines, in union halls, classrooms, and book-stuffed offices, and on the page itself. The Order in Which We Do Things is a collection of more than thirty of Wayman's best poems, selected and introduced by Owen Percy. Percy's introduction explores the genesis of Wayman's print persona and contextualizes his politically engaged, conversational voice within the pantheon of its various publics. In his afterword, ""Work and Silence,"" Wayman reflects on his more than forty years in print as a work poet, and underlines poetry's sustained power to engage readers, invite solidarity, and stoke the fires of critical resistance to the order in which we do things.Trade Review``Wayman...believes that poetry exists beyone 'the money economy' and because of this freedom it creates the highest potential to drive social change. His concerns are humanist and folksy, infused with the moral responsibility of integrity. This series, because of its...scope and space...allows the reader to see how Wayman's immersions in these moral concerns have developed and morphed from those of the lowly factory worker to those of acute environmental observance. Always the poems are permeated by intense attention to...a sense of justice.'' -- Micheline Maylor -- Alberta Views, June 2014, 201406Table of Contents The Order in Which We Do Things: The Poetry of Tom Wayman, selected with an introduction by Owen Percy Foreword, Neil Besner Biographical Note Introduction: Wayman in Print: ""He Do the Polis in Different Voices,"" Owen Percy Days: Construction Picketing Supermarkets Wayman in Love The Country of Everyday: Literary Criticism The Factory Hour The Old Power Industrial Music Factory Time Garrison Friday Night in Early September at Morris and Sara Wayman's Farm, Roseneath, Ontario White Hand Silos Paper, Scissors, Stone The Face of Jack Munro A Cursing Poem: This Poem Wants Gordon Shrum to Die The Poet Defective Parts of Speech: Official Errata Did I Miss Anything? The Man Who Logged the West Ridge For William Stafford (1914-1993) War on a Round Planet Cup Epithalamium for a Former Lover Calgary Postmodern 911 Mt. Gimli Pashtun Air Support Whistle The White Dogs Minutes Breath Afterword: Work and Silence, Tom Wayman Acknowledgements

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Book SynopsisThese 189 posthumously published new poems take us deeper into the raw, wild vein of Bukowski's that extends from the early 1980s up to the time of his death in 1994.

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Book SynopsisThis collection of previously unpublished poems offers the author's take on squabbling neighbours, off-kilter lovers, would-be hangers-on, and the loneliness of a man afflicted with acute powers of observation. The tone is gritty and amusing, spiralling out towards a cock-eyed wisdom.

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Book SynopsisThe author of nine volumes of poetry and numerous other writings, the editor of several literary journals, the recipient of copious awards, including the James Still Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, and a longtime teacher and mentor, East Tennessee native Jeff Daniel Marion has come to be known as one of the most significant and beloved voices in Appalachian literature over the past four decades. The twenty-one pieces in this illuminating collection range from ex­aminations of Marion’s poetry to considerations of his teaching career and influence on students, writers, and artists throughout the region and beyond.Acclaimed poet, novelist, and historian Robert Morgan writes about how Marion affected his development as a writer and the key role Marion has played in bringing Appalachian literature into its own.Scholar Randall Wilhelm’s essay, meanwhile, expands our appreciation for Marion not only as a poet but as a visual artist, tracing the connection between his photography and po­etic imagery. Also included are essays by John Lang on the ways in which Marion’s poetry “gives voice to a spiritual vision of nature’s sacramental identity,” Gina Herring on how the poet’s father has served as his muse, and George Ella Lyon on the power of story in Marion’s picture book for children, Hello, Crow. Other features include an autobiographical essay by Marion himself, an interview conducted by coeditor Jesse Graves, and a bibliography and timeline that summarize Marion’s life and career.In the book’s introduction, Ernest Lee notes that in the poem “Boundaries,” from his first published collection, the young Marion “dedicated himself to his place, to the land and his heri­tage . . . welcoming whatever may come with a firm faith that ultimately his life as a poetic laborer will bring him to a true, sharp vision.” The eloquent contributions to this volume reveal just how fully that dedication has paid off.

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Book SynopsisThough perhaps best known for his 1947 Pulitzer Prize winning novel All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren’s final phase of poetry from the 1960s through the 1980s demonstrates a maturity of thought not previously seen in his work. By wrestling with the fundamental questions of language and articulation throughout his work in this period, Warren seeks to understand how the poet can “say the unsayable.”Poetic Creation is John C. Van Dyke’s plunge into this liminal moment in Warren’s career, exploring Warren’s poetry from his 1969 Audubon: A Vision through his later works. By reading this late poetry in light of several of Warren’s critical essays—most notably his work on Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner—Van Dyke traces the development of Warren’s struggle with language through his unrelenting attention to the act of poetic creation itself. Warren’s open confrontation with language is marked by a shift from utilizing language as a tool toward understanding it as a play of difference, locating his later poetic creation within a postmodern discourse on language and the unsayable. Questions about the power and limitations of language color Warren’s later poetry with an earnest struggle only hinted at in his earlier works.Poetic Creation reads Robert Penn Warren’s later poetry in a unique way that places his work at the heart of contemporary discourses on language and the unsayable. Van Dyke invites the reader to return to the poems themselves to participate in Warren’s pursuit of poetry’s unique power to speak the unsayable into the world.

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Book Synopsis

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