Working always to connect the polemical to the personal, Peter Dale Scott's political poems - from the tear gas of Berkeley protests in the 1960s to the problems of Thai forest monks in an era of drug-trafficking and deforestation - are a process of self-questioning. Self-questioning also marks his meditation poems, including a sequence on the death of his first wife. In opposition to contemporary poems of studied meaninglessness, Scott increasingly recognizes a compulsion in himself to radically reaffirm traditional rejections of the external world and turn to the refuges of poets before...
Working always to connect the polemical to the personal, Peter Dale Scott's political poems - from the tear gas of Berkeley protests in the 1960s to t...
From handling of the chessmen you infer the secret springs of human character. To pluck the enemy chessman between your fingers and replace it with your own reveals the cultivated, well-bred killer who cannot stand the sight of blood; knock the chessman over with a small click of wood on wood tells of an aesthetic craving for the fatal instrument, of one more passionate than violent; to push the piece from its intended square is signal of aggressive character and plainly indicates that power is the motive for committing murder; some will hold the captured piece and caress it nervously: these...
From handling of the chessmen you infer the secret springs of human character. To pluck the enemy chessman between your fingers and replace it with yo...
A sense of exile and belonging dominates the poems, following the journey of a blind man whose life in his new land has been hampered by prejudice and barriers to communication. Exposing the rich and surprising possibilities of a life that has undergone a frightening transformation, Blindfold relates feelings of loss, displacement, and disorientation experienced not only by the disabled but by everyone who finds themselves separated from the norm. Silver Threads He recalls the absence of sound, the impossible silence the disappearance of light. He is only aware of the movement of his mother's...
A sense of exile and belonging dominates the poems, following the journey of a blind man whose life in his new land has been hampered by prejudice and...
"There's a gap between where / an electron is and where it might be / and that's the only real work-place. / You occupy that office of possibility." Where are you in that space between the electron and the galaxy, and how do you find yourself there? Particles asks this question and answers it by asking more questions, conveying both the mystery and the uncertainty of the universe.
"There's a gap between where / an electron is and where it might be / and that's the only real work-place. / You occupy that office of possibility." W...
At night we swim / following the fence: / diverted / we enter the net / shaped like a heart / and in the heart the hook / guides us to the back A stunning unfolding of memory, Wavelengths of Your Song juxtaposes a childhood in the northern Canadian wilderness with the adventures of an international creative life. Genuine environmentalism is at the heart of this collection. Migrations of birds and humans lend their songs to the vivid writing and a tangible, sensory reality emerges from their sounds. Music by Beethoven and Rzewski, paintings by Norval Morrisseau and Kandinsky, and writing by...
At night we swim / following the fence: / diverted / we enter the net / shaped like a heart / and in the heart the hook / guides us to the back A stun...
From "Anna's Lovers" Our houses glow both from within and on the outside: their night lights and an almost perfect and wintry moon. The phrase "but for now" means among other things "making do," as if we had to settle for the bare minimum. In But for Now, Gordon Johnston presents poems where the mortal world is more than enough because there is more to it than the merely mortal and where it is possible to hear beyond the outmoded clanking of inherited religious vocabularies. These poems find moments of grace in chance occurrences and through a wide range of styles and methods, they...
From "Anna's Lovers" Our houses glow both from within and on the outside: their night lights and an almost perfect and wintry moon. The phrase "but fo...
