A new dress every day : poems in my mother's voice / Marty Gervais.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gervais, C. H. (Charles Henry), 1946- author.

Contributor:

Laura Jan Meyerson Poetry Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Canadian poetry--20th century.

Canadian poetry.

Genre:

Poetry.

Physical Description:

xiv, 63 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

Oakville, Ontario : Mosaic Press, 2021.

Summary:

"Set in the late 1920s and 1930s, this is the story of teenage French-Canadian farm girls from Stoney Point and Pain Court and Grande Pointe packing up and moving to the city, to find work in Windsor or Detroit as house keepers and nannies for well-to-do families. Marie Anne Mineau was one of those innocent young women whose life on the farm and the village is dominated by religion, and all its expectations and superstitions. She speaks of ghosts in the fields, and haunting the farmhouse, of weddings and lavish picnics in a black Walnut grove back the barn, of collecting eggs and doing chores, of a sister running off to be married, and Marie Anne's own wedding, at barely 19 years old, and driving through the night to Niagara Falls with a man she hardly knew. The poems, written by Windsor's Marty Gervais, are cast in the voice of his own mother who shared all these stories of him. It is a picture of a time and place now lost to history, but it was one that vividly captures the story of hundreds of young women who left rural Canada for good paying jobs away in the city."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: What Comes from Silence

Baptism

What My Mother Said

Fields of Ghosts

Moving to the City

Church Suppers in the Great Depression

The Photographer

The Faith Healer

My German Grandmother

Half Brother

First Visit to Point Pelee

The Promise

Two Brides Two Months Apart

A Great Aunt Going Home

Honeymoon Ride to Niagara Falls, July 1936

The Alvin, 1936

Birth on Albert Road, 1937

When the War Started

George Avenue, December 1940

The Suitcase

Chasing the Tornado, June 1946

To be Opened Later, Winter 1947

Family Portrait, Belle Isle, Detroit 1949

Dresses in Our Closet, 1949

Joe Louis: On the Road, Winter 1950

Near Lighthouse Cove

A Girl

When the World is Normal

Birthday Party, July 1956

The Young Boy and the Piano

Dear Ann Landers, Summer 1956

The Day My Mother Died, 1957

Time Alone, 1957

My Uncle, the Catholic Priest

My Father's Wives

Wedding Dress

The Painter's Dream

Reading Between the Lines

The Barn

Last Will.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Laura Jan Meyerson Poetry Fund.

Other Format:

Online version: Gervais, C. H. (Charles Henry), 1946- New day every day.

ISBN:

9781771615648

1771615648

OCLC:

1242040612

Publisher Number:

99989053343