Breath That Lightens the Body

by Dwyer, Deirdre

• ISBN13: 9780888783943
• ISBN10: 0888783949
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-02-01
• Publisher: Dundurn Pr Ltd

Summary

Following in the footsteps of Karen Connolly and Steven Heighton, Halifax native Dirdre Dwyer roams the Mediterranean and South East Asian terrain of Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand, India, Turkey, Greece and Spain as a foreigner voyeur, at once nomadic and in exile, breathing in the sites and sounds of the exotic lands that rise up to greet her. Here is a beautiful chronicle of a sojourn to worlds translated from strange brushstrokes of landscape and gesture into the shared language of sight and sound. Here too is a traveller in the process of translating herself so that divergent cultures form a language not broken but braided.These poems are as much about the "eye" and the "I" and the levelling of a gaze which casts itself upon wind, water, light, mountain and the sun-drenched faces of all those with whom she shares the path. In an attempt to capture the harmony and balance of eastern mythology and the quiet spirit that infuses the mind and body, the poet inhales a deep breath that also lightens this body of verse, a refreshing human breeze that carries with it a myriad of rich and pungent memories. On the final page the traveller exhales an altered self, happy to occupy the body that is home, returning to Canada re-turned.