Forecast : selected early poems (1970-1990) / John Pass.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pass, John, 1947- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Canadian poetry--21st century.

Canadian poetry.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (132 pages)

Place of Publication:

Madeira Park, British Columbia : Harbour Publishing, [2015]

Summary:

Forecast recovers early out-of-print work by Governor General's Award-winning poet John Pass. The poems engage potentialities-travel, an orchard he cares for, evolving relationships, house-building, becoming a poet and husband and father. They're grounded in place and time, but attuned, as he says, to constancy. Those for his young sons are poignant with the perilous hope of new parenthood: “asking courage of me / as never I needed nor knew it in sorrow." Darker premonitions-dislocation, environmental damage, poetry's shift from modernism to postmodernism-are mitigated throughout by the subtlety and solace of attentive expression. In “Apple," Pass “contrives" to suspend time so that “Friends in the kitchen / re-reading Pound's translations / of Rihaku" are still there days later when the tree outside blooms, concluding: “Only beyond / in the garden, that canopy // of fragrance, art's / complement: coincidence. // Friends, come home. / There is everything." Any fashionable irony is tempered-dispirited and optimistic. In “An Arbitrary Dictionary," random words are selected to become poem titles, idiosyncratic definitions. Surprising complexity and insight often spring from their funny and irreverent first takes, as in “Tuck": “No life for a fat man / with that once merry band gone wan / on a diet of personal aggrandizement / and Perrier." The sequence's experimentation foreshadows Pass's expansive work in his later quartet, AT LARGE.

Contents:

Intro

Preface

TAKING PLACE

Debussy Dream

Nudists at Wreck Beach

A Simple Solution

Overseas

The Jewel Tower, Westminster

Farm Sale in Wales

Dynasty

Renaissance

Kernow

The Crossing

The Carpet

Pacific

Upper Levels

The Embankment

The Path

Periwinkle

Pruning

Poem Facing the Other Way

Lilac

ORDINARY LOVE

A Little Digging

Sun in the Afternoon

The Veil

Ornamental Plum

The Warmest Night of the Year

Trellis

The Proximity

The Fence Is Really Something

Indications, Seasonally Adjusted

Premise

Locale

Old Fixtures

Ordinary Love

Apple

THE CROSSTOWN BUS

The Lights

The Approach

To Orpheus, Turning

Homage to the Pornographer's Model

An Empty Glass

Reclined, at Speed

The Crosstown Bus

Theresa

An Apprehension

May and Memorial

Riddle

For My Wife of 27 Days

A Devotion

AN ARBITRARY DICTIONARY

Thorough

Fret

Scale

Coil

Friary

Obtain

Solitaire

Consistence

Deadly

Harpy

Tariff

Bite

Pup

Fish

Round

Stage

Iconometer

Question

Calkin

Race

Compress

Piper

Boot

Handsel

Exoteric

Franciscan

Withershins

Sojourn

Tuck

Inequality

Direct

Figwort

Billing

Out

Afterword

BABY SHOUTS DAO

First Structure

Poem for the New World

Further

The Stars

Forrest's Perfect Chuckle

Day Care

Baby Shouts Dao

I Say What You Say

Birthday

Second Son

Entreaty

Days in the Dark of Building

Forecast

CALLING

And Hold

Rugosa

Married Love

Shine

I Do

One. Life

Calling

Sagittarius A West

When I Heard the Learned Deconstructionist

A Clue

Acknowledgements

About the Author.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781550177329

155017732X

OCLC:

1293245621