Description
Book SynopsisThere is beauty in the teacup like dresses requiring crinoline or beaded purses too small to carry anything but anger. — from “Inheritance” Marita Dachsel’s third poetry collection explores parenthood, love, and the grief of losing those both close and distant. In the tradition of Karen Solie and Suzanne Buffam, and with a touch of Canadian Gothic, Dachsel’s poetic skills unfold in a variety of brief and expansive forms. Authentic and controlled, full of complexity and disorder, her poems offer release despite their painful twists and topics. Readers across generations will find kinship in Dachsel’s grief-fuelled and vulnerable words.
Trade Review# 1 on Edmonton Fiction Bestsellers list, April 3, 2019
"Dachsel’s poems also offer a kind of spiritual clarity, navigating a sequence of uncertainties with a careful confidence..." -- Rob Mclennan
"...strike a balance between the potent dramas of family life and the sense that all can be lost in a moment of forgetfulness, or the ever-ready subsuming of mortality.... The balance is maintained, but like a teacup on the tip of a pencil, and the value of the collection rests in our recognition that we, too, search for that balance." [Full review at https://ormsbyreview.com/2020/03/20/775-carroll-dachsel-thornton/] -- John Carroll * The Ormsby Review *
"These [three] fine collections focus on loss... Wisdom of both the aging and the ages shines through. Wistfully, they explore growing older and what comes next—or doesn’t.... Dachsel’s more ribald images... are jolting and rich." [Full review at https://canlit.ca/article/never-enough-sad-poems] -- Crystal Hurdle * Canadian Literature *
Table of ContentsContents 1 after the funeral 2 spring 3 sizzle 4 illusion 5 vermin 6 inheritance 7 our home needs to be painted 8 self portrait 9 alberta avenue 10 the impossibility of fireflies 11 klondike 12 may is an uneasy month 13 returning from seeing the man with the beard of bees 14 our guilt stays with us 15 good to keep busy 16 neighbourly 17 he always gave us the creeps 18 my money’s on the magpie 19 my mum’s grandmother had a terrible accident when she was a young mother 20 grown up 21 main & broadway 22 hold on 23 your light, your light 24 a sonnet for middle-age mothers 25 solstice 26 gentle infestation 27 mothering 28 cavity 29 clover point 30 beached 31 epithalamium 32 check for spots 34 yes, let’s 35 the forties 36 unfasten 37 these days, those days 38 accumulate 39 now is the season of open windows 40 shuswap july 41 vanish 42 plato island 43 always with the fucking fish 44 we both wore red lipstick 45 obligatory road trip 46 swing therapy 47 before serious 49 even bleach can’t remove the smell 50 for phillis wheatley 51 the birth of father yod 52 roots 53 keepsake 54 last suppers 55 arbutus 56 there are not enough sad songs 57 down under 58 terminal 59 new year’s day, 2015 60 child 63 Acknowledgements
