The Crisp Day Closing On My Hand

The Crisp Day Closing On My Hand

Jeanette Lynes

Wilfrid Laurier University Press

Wilfrid Laurier University

Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, N2L 3C5

9781554580255, $14.95 wlupress.wlu.ca

Poetry is as diverse in its form and format as it is in expressional content and emotional articulation. It can be as ephemeral as a moment or as enduring as the recorded history of human kind. The latest addition to the impressive Laurier Poetry series from Wilfrid Laurier University Press, "The Crisp Day Closing On My Hand" is a compilation of the poetry of M. Travis Lane (Honorary President of the Writers' Federation of New Brunwick and a Life Member of the League of Canadian Poets) as selected and with an informative introduction by Jeanette Lynes (Associate Professor of English, St. Francis Xavier University and co-editor of 'The Antigonish Review). Lane has long established her reputation as a major Canadian poet through the publication of eleven books of poetry and the achievement of several prestigious awards for her writings. This newest collection of her verse will aptly serve to introduce a major literary talent to a new generation of readers. 'The Gift from the Bad Fairy': This is the curse, that we do not sleep/and let the rose briars hide us, but our hope/awakes each morning to be pricked.//I sew this page, the needle hurts, is bone,/is flesh, is permanent. If we could sleep,/the future like a fairy prince suck out/the dead bee's mortal sting and change the world/to roses...//But it is, roses, every morning/when we wake. I take my housework up again,/and find again the secret thorn/the sick rose nourished every day.//What makes us thing the heart breaks once? It breaks/all day. It breaks like rain. All that I did/not want to bear has to be borne, and what I mend/has to be mended all over again.//Do we learn to be glad there is still pain?

COPYRIGHT 2008 Midwest Book Review
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning