The Hunter

by MURRAY, GEORGE

• ISBN13: 9780771066757
• ISBN10: 0771066759
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-03-25
• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart

Summary

Breathtaking new poetry by the author ofThe Cottage Builder's Letter In this brilliantly evoked new gathering of poems, George Murray creates a strange and menacing world, pulsating with sensory intensity. These poems don't just inquire, they demand answers, and go seeking them through the realms of the past, the present, and the future. Here are stories and images that challenge, threaten, and fascinate by their dreamlike clarity, flickering through kaleidoscopic changes and throwing off resonant statements like sparks. "On either side of awe," as Murray puts it in these innovative new poems, "stand horror and reverence." Events and figures emerge swiftly out of one another in a landscape partly a futuristic or ancient wasteland, partly the generous earth we know. The collection as a whole forms a saga, moving from contemporary damage toward the possibilities disaster? recovery? that always exist "in the few moments we have under the sky."

Author Biography

<b>George Murray</b> is the author of two acclaimed books of poetry, <i>Carousel</i> (2000) and <i>The Cottage Builder’s Letter</i> (2001). His work has appeared in many newspapers and magazines in Canada, and in the U.S. and Australia, including <i>Descant</i>,<i> The Iowa Review</i>,<i> The Globe and Mail</i>,<i> Jacket</i>,<i> Mid-American Review</i>,<i> Nerve</i>,<i> Painted Bride Quarterly</i>, and<i> Slope</i>. He is also an editor at <i>Maisonneuve Magazine</i>. Raised in rural Ontario, he now lives in New York City.<b><br></b><br>Selected poems from his most recent book of poetry, <i>The Hunter, </i> have appeared in <i>The Globe and Mail</i> and in <i>100</i> <i>Poets Against War</i>.

Excerpts

WOLF

The architect of the cottage on the hill
never took into account
its foundations. Having been paid

for a hasty erection, he forgot what damage
the ages might do
to a dwelling built in a passion for ease.

It’s not the noise of the city that distracts,
it’s the narrative.
It’s the urge to pluck order, a through-­line,

purpose, from the seeming chaos. It’s the need
to make sense from nonsense
that occupies waking moments and coaxes

inactivity from accomplishment.
O for a pair of red eyes
in the woods. What should we fear

in an age that has killed emergency,
when stakes of destruction
have been jacked so high no one

can match the ante? The kindness
in the eyes of the dog
is not the opposite of the malice

dripping from the wolf’s maw. For now
we must share these shadows
with the dark, for it does not have its own.
For now we must go where they
do not want us.
For now we must explore.

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Excerpted from The Hunter by George Murray
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.