Left Fields

by Lynes, Jeanette

• ISBN13: 9780919897885
• ISBN10: 0919897886
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-08-01
• Publisher: Wolsak and Wynn Publishers Ltd

Summary

Left Fields, Jeanette Lynes's second collection of poetry with Wolsak and Wynn, consolidates her reputation for writing clear-eyed, accesible and deadly funny poetry. Her first book, A Woman Along on the Aitkokan Highway, immediately struck a chord in the minds of readers and writers of poetry alike: "With nimble imagination and a humour that is tough and vulnerable as the heart of country and western, Jeanette Lynes's poems speak in their own sharply tanged and quite unignorable voice" - Don McKay. In her first book she introduced us to a difficult childhood in southern Ontario; in Left Fieldsshe revisits the solid, angry/loving bond with her mother, the attitudes she adopts as weapons against the world, and the left fields of her childhood, a landscape she never really left, but carries with her as a snail carries her house on her back. Poems such as "The Icicle Hunter" highlight her tough-tender style, with its contagious humour.

Author Biography

Jeanette Lynes grew up in rural southwestern Ontario. She has lived in Toronto, Edmonton, Vancouver and Thunder Bay, among other places. Her poetry collection, A Woman Alone on the Atitkokan Highway was published by Wolsak and Wynn Publishers Ltd. In 1999. She received the Bliss Carmam Poetry Award in 2001, and her poems are frequently broadcast on CBC Radio. Jeanette is currently a Professor at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia.

Table of Contents

I Homeland, With Wreckage
Career Day at Diefenbaker High	13	(2)
St. Paul's crossing	15	(1)
Broken country	16	(1)
Smile	17	(1)
The girls next door	18	(1)
Mother teaching her daughter to skate a long time ago	19	(1)
Any room we enter	20	(1)
Crowning glory	21	(2)
Shania: a Canadian tale	23	(1)
Adventures in moving	24	(2)
What we learned on the highway near St. John's	26	(1)
Answering my American friends	27	(1)
Gutter and gloves	28	(1)
To go back	29	(3)
More bridge shots 30 Brave	32	(5)
II Can Anything Save a Daughter?
The orphan collector	37	(1)
The great era of aerial photography	38	(1)
The Ken Madsen path to town	39	(1)
Jogging	40	(1)
Mirrors in Mexico	41	(1)
The Guess Who Play North Bay - One Night Only	42	(2)
What the poem wants	44	(1)
Duke	45	(1)
Dead people's clothes	46	(2)
Shooting the little bear	48	(1)
Dreams: two families at the end of civilisation	49	(1)
Weapon of mouse destruction	50	(1)
Moose whistles	51	(1)
On rereading Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country People"	52	(2)
A brief history of bison	54	(1)
The Horse Whisperer	55	(1)
This can't possibly be my life	56	(3)
III This Is Your Life The new stories	59
Missing	60	(1)
Markings	61	(1)
The wrecker	62	(1)
Bog	63	(1)
Current	64	(1)
Summer house, Southampton, 1939	65	(2)
Water lilies	67	(3)
Post	70	(1)
You have mail, Charlotte Brontë	71	(1)
Six smaller landscapes, after A.M. Klein's "Portrait of the Poet as Landscape"	72	(3)
Love poem disguised as carpentry	75	(1)
The icicle hunter	76	(1)
Beside herself	77	(1)
Confession: she is jealous of her students	78	(1)
Bergamot	79	(1)
Loosestrife	80	(1)
Blue jay lesson	81	(1)
The sign on my door	82	(1)
The Hours	83	(2)
Abacus abalone abandon	85