Category Archives: Poetry

She is a master of ekphrasis. Take her poem “Giocometti’s Dog” in the collection of the same name. She has contrived to open by posing a set of negations (what this particular sculpture of an animal cannot) and turns in … Continue reading →

Allan Cooper in Gabriel’s Wing has a poem in honour of Seamus Heaney. It is a fine meditation entitled “Potatoes”. After stanzas describing potatoes in all their concrete earthiness, the poem turns to a search for one word equally nourishing. … Continue reading →

He approaches this spot via negative theology. We are lonely for where we are. Tim Lilburn in “How to be here?” in Poetry and Knowing goes on Poetry helps us cope. Poetry is where we go when we want to … Continue reading →

What kind of beast? Part of the excitement inside this species of meditative act [poetic attention] is linguistic; it’s the excitement of a tool which has hatched the illicit desire to behave like an animal. from Don McKay’s contribution to … Continue reading →

Robert Bringhurst in “Poetry and Thinking” in Thinking and Singing edited by Tim Lilburn. But not to repeat. Mimesis is not repetition. One way of answering that music [poetry as a music we lean to see, to feel, to hear, … Continue reading →

Tim Lilburn in the preface to Thinking and Singing has this phrase which I lift from an enumeration of other phrases and leave to stand alone: “lifting to the tongue latent things”. Out of its context I would have its … Continue reading →

In a poem that rings the changes between “hang on”, “hold on” and “hand on” there is a concluding openness in the lines that brush up against attachment to confer upon the reader a line without punctuation that suspends the … Continue reading →

Aislinn Hunter in her contribution to A Ragged Pen: Essays on Poetry & Memory develops a conceit comparing a poem and furniture. I believe when we read a poem we enter a room. A room fashioned by the poet from … Continue reading →