The Crisp Day Closing on My Hand

by Lane, M. Travis

• ISBN13: 9781554580255
• ISBN10: 1554580250
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-11-01
• Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ Pr

Summary

This collection of thirty-five of Lane's best poems is selected with an introduction by Jeanette Lynes. An environmentalist, feminist, and peace activist, M. Travis Lane is known for witty and meticulously crafted poems that explore the elusive nature of 'home' in both historical and present contexts and reflect on the identity of the woman poet and what it means to be a writer. Lane's poems exhibit impressive range and variety -- long poems, short lyrics, serial poems, poems inspired by visual art -- and are richly attentive to the landscapes, both urban and wild. In her introduction 'As Opportunity for Grace, This Life May Serve', editor Jeanette Lynes discusses how Lane's poetry integrates an eco-poetic vision with explorations of the artist's task of mapping her world. Lane's afterword reinforces her sense of the poet's project as a form of mystical play, a search for patterns in the 'unified disunities' of all things.

Author Biography

M. Travis Lane is Honorary President of the Writer's Federation of New Brunswick and a Life Member of the League of Canadian Poets.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Biographical Note
Introduction
The Talisman	p. 1
Advertisement	p. 2
Compost	p. 3
The Song of Lot's Wife	p. 4
A Stone from Fundy	p. 7
Well, Viewed by the God	p. 8
Colonial	p. 10
Red Earth [excerpt; from "Divinations;' Book Two]	p. 11
Walking Under the Nebulae	p. 14
The Weight of the Real	p. 15
The House as Sculpture as Chapel as Priest	p. 16
Six Poems on a Sculpture by Ulker Ozerdem	p. 17
For the Cenotaph, November 11, 1983	p. 23
Departures	p. 24
Whine	p. 25
King's Landing	p. 26
The Gift from the Bad Fairy	p. 29
Skindeep	p. 30
The Horn That Is So Difficult to Play	p. 33
You Want Your Truths Told of You	p. 34
Hills	p. 35
Local Suite	p. 43
About the Size of It	p. 53
Half Past	p. 54
Triptych/Tock	p. 55
There Are Real Ants in the Metro	p. 58
Strive for a Deep Stillness	p. 59
Dusk Sequence	p. 60
Codicil	p. 62
"Cracked"	p. 63
Keeping Afloat	p. 68
The Soloist	p. 71
Tourists	p. 73
Overboard	p. 74
For You	p. 75
Afterword: Those Mysteries of Which We Cannot Plainly Speak	p. 77
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