Earth Words
Conversing with Three Sages
1. Auflage
Erschienen am 20. Oktober 2021
128 Seiten
978-0-2280-1009-8 (ISBN)
Beschreibung
The leaves of paper / butterfly-wing thin / let light stream through / only one side of each.
If "poetry is what we do to break bread with the dead," as Seamus Heaney put it, Earth Words breaks bread with three earlier writers through the glosa, a poetic form that unfolds as a dialogue. The collection inscribes a series of concentric circles, moving outwards from the eleventh-century world of Wang An-shih through the nineteenth century of Henry Thoreau and into the twentieth century with Emily Carr.
Though the environmental and political problems of the twenty-first century feel unique, the figures in this book are met with similar challenges. Wang's writings embody an ideal relationship between self and nature, preserving a sense of rootedness in times resembling the upheavals of the Trump era. This relationship is confirmed in conversations with Thoreau, whose closeness to nature provides an antidote to our age's dependence on digital forms of communication. He also grapples with slavery and the failure to respect the full humanity of Indigenous peoples, struggles that ripple out into the present. Carr's writings and art enter into Indigenous cultures and witness the enduring value of their way of looking at nature. She realizes that the impulse to creatively express one's being runs through the entire natural world.
Culminating in this realization, the concentric circles of Earth Words broaden out to include its twenty-first-century readers as well as its writers in a vision of creative growth.
If "poetry is what we do to break bread with the dead," as Seamus Heaney put it, Earth Words breaks bread with three earlier writers through the glosa, a poetic form that unfolds as a dialogue. The collection inscribes a series of concentric circles, moving outwards from the eleventh-century world of Wang An-shih through the nineteenth century of Henry Thoreau and into the twentieth century with Emily Carr.
Though the environmental and political problems of the twenty-first century feel unique, the figures in this book are met with similar challenges. Wang's writings embody an ideal relationship between self and nature, preserving a sense of rootedness in times resembling the upheavals of the Trump era. This relationship is confirmed in conversations with Thoreau, whose closeness to nature provides an antidote to our age's dependence on digital forms of communication. He also grapples with slavery and the failure to respect the full humanity of Indigenous peoples, struggles that ripple out into the present. Carr's writings and art enter into Indigenous cultures and witness the enduring value of their way of looking at nature. She realizes that the impulse to creatively express one's being runs through the entire natural world.
Culminating in this realization, the concentric circles of Earth Words broaden out to include its twenty-first-century readers as well as its writers in a vision of creative growth.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
"Thirty years after P.K. Page brought the glosa to our collective dazzled attention, John Reibetanz takes a poetic form that is inarguably the one most enthusiastically appropriated by many Canadian poets and makes it abundantly his own. A verse strategy designed to bring one poet into intimate, if brief, conversation with another is given the page-turning sweep of intellectual narrative in three multi-glosa dialogues between Reibetanz and Wang An-shih, Henry Thoreau, and Emily Carr. As in all meaningful, lifelong one-on-ones, his exchanges with his reclusive mandarin, bushwhacking Transcendentalist, and rainforest mystic are pensive, polemical, humourous, lyrical, confiding, philosophical, and generously searching. A lifetime of reading, deep thinking and profound appreciation makes the glosas in Earth Words the most remarkable poems in Reibetanz's already impressive career." John Barton, author of Lost Family: A Memoir "'I've been searching for you, teacher,' John Reibetanz writes to Wang An-shih; 'Walk with me, Henry,' he addresses Thoreau; and to Emily Carr, 'Fast forward on your part, rewind on mine.' With great humanity and astonishing control of craft, Reibetanz invites his readers into cross-generational encounters with three 'seers.' Each poem is both a superb glosa and an invitation to learn what unites us with these lives of vastly different sensibilities, challenges, and dangers. With a light touch and a careful aesthetic, Reibetanz responds to his encounters with exquisite small tracts of lightness, beauty, and wisdom." Maureen Hynes, author of Sotto VoceWeitere Details
Reihe
Sprache
Englisch
Verlagsort
Montreal, QC
Kanada
Editions-Typ
Digitale Ausgabe
Dateigröße
3,03 MB
ISBN-13
978-0-2280-1009-8 (9780228010098)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Weitere Ausgaben
Andere Ausgaben
Buch
10/2021
McGill-Queen's University Press
19,50 €
Artikel z.Zt. nicht lieferbar
Person
John Reibetanz has written twelve previous poetry collections and is a fellow of Victoria College and senior fellow at Massey College, University of Toronto.
Inhalt
- Cover
- Copyright
- Contents
- I Talking with Wang An-shih
- A Calling
- Transport
- Butterflies
- Nothing Gold Can Stay
- The Pattern of Your Days
- The Voicing Room
- Ruins 1
- Ruins 2
- Anchorage
- Islands 1
- Islands 2
- Nothing but the Wild Rain
- Sounding the Silences
- Double Exposure
- The Country of Your Past
- Autumn Rivers
- Harmonies
- II Walking with Henry Thoreau
- Scope
- Field of Vision
- The Harp
- Battery Fed
- Companioned
- Combatants
- The Sea Is All About Us
- Ruined Foundations
- Fugitives
- A New World
- A Deeper World
- Timber
- The River Is Within Us
- Seeing Doubles
- Rounds: Annual
- The Patterns in Your Rounds
- Rounds: The Creel
- III Looking with Emily Carr
- Beyond
- Tree Talk
- Epping Forest
- Two Ruins
- Kitwancool Shanty
- Unsheltered
- Between Forest and Sea
- Totems
- Bird House
- Mirror 1
- Animal Talk
- Callings
- Connections
- Forest Spirit
- Mirror 2
- Clumsy Life Again
- Skidegate Sands
- Notes
- Acknowledgments
