By Hand
Description
Poems that examine the creative achievements of the human hand, from cave art to contemporary photography.
John Reibetanz's twelfth collection, By Hand, begins with an epigraph from Lewis Mumford: "Until modern times, apart from the esoteric knowledge of the priests, philosophers, and astronomers, the greater part of human thought and imagination flowed through the hands." Reibetanz's new poems investigate human creativity as a visceral interaction with the world: our imagining hands finding the music implicit in the stuff of earth, a "duet// of earthbound songsters," of mind and material, each shaping the other. Centered on this duet, the book encompasses the wide-ranging aspects of our humanity-hands used for good and ill-portrayed in the examined paintings and sculptures, gardens, tapestries, photographs, and carvings. And they explore in particular the relationship in these artifacts between the "givens" of nature and the modifications and contributions of human culture. As Roo Borson says of the collection, "the poems are shot through with moments in which language's particular dexterity comes into its own and real objects are remade, as when these lines from 'The Installation' celebrate the 'commonality of clay' in a relief by della Robbia:
"the light-quickened humus
of the eyes that, for hundreds of years, have read the notes
inscribed on the banner an angel is unscrolling..."
"These are the words of a real craftsman, writing about other makers...Through acute seeing, [Reibetanz] communicates to the reader the nowness of things made centuries ago and the humanity of their creators."-Robert Lemay
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John Reibetanz is the author of eleven previous collections of poetry, and his poems have appeared in such magazines as Poetry (Chicago), The Paris Review, The Walrus, and Canadian Literature. A finalist for the National Magazine Awards, the National Poetry Competition, and the ReLit Award, John has given readings in major cities all across Canada. He was elected a Senior Fellow of Massey College in 2010. The Essential John Reibetanz, edited by Jeffery Donaldson, was published by The Porcupine's Quill in 2017. He lives in Toronto.