Loop - Softcover

Simpson, Anne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0771080751 ISBN 13: 9780771080753

Publisher: McClelland & Stewart, 2003

Synopsis

By the author of Light Falls Through You and the novel Canterbury Beach

In Loop, Anne Simpson explores the power, and the anguish, of many different modes of return – retrieval, revision, the covering of old ground with eyes wider and thoughts reconditioned by difficult wisdom. These poems occur at that place where a focused, compassionate vision comes to inhabit language and to find the forms that will suffice: a Möbius strip poem that loops back on itself; a crown of sonnets that take us back to the shock and grief of the twin towers and find deep resonance with paintings by Brueghel; a set of quick improvisations like the motion studies done for a drawing class. Simpson’s work shows us, again and again, the insight and excitement that come from the practice of a necessary craft in the service of a committed vision.

About this title

About the Author

ANNE SIMPSON is the author of four books of poetry, Is (2011); Quick (2007), winner of the Pat Lowther Memorial Award; Loop (2003), winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize; and Light Falls Through You (2000), winner of the Gerald Lampert Memorial Prize and the Atlantic Poetry Prize. She has also written two novels, Falling (2008), longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and winner of the Dartmouth Award for Fiction, and Canterbury Beach (2001). Her book of essays, The Marram Grass: Poetry and Otherness (2009), delves into issues of poetry, art, and empathy. While her home is in Nova Scotia, she has been a writer-in-residence at many universities and libraries across Canada.

From the Back Cover

"By the author of Light Falls Through You" and the novel Canterbury Beach
In "Loop, Anne Simpson explores the power, and the anguish, of many different modes of return - retrieval, revision, the covering of old ground with eyes wider and thoughts reconditioned by difficult wisdom. These poems occur at that place where a focused, compassionate vision comes to inhabit language and to find the forms that will suffice: a Mobius strip poem that loops back on itself; a crown of sonnets that take us back to the shock and grief of the twin towers and find deep resonance with paintings by Brueghel; a set of quick improvisations like the motion studies done for a drawing class. Simpson's work shows us, again and again, the insight and excitement that come from the practice of a necessary craft in the service of a committed vision.

From the Inside Flap

By the author of Light Falls Through You and the novel Canterbury Beach

In Loop, Anne Simpson explores the power, and the anguish, of many different modes of return ? retrieval, revision, the covering of old ground with eyes wider and thoughts reconditioned by difficult wisdom. These poems occur at that place where a focused, compassionate vision comes to inhabit language and to find the forms that will suffice: a Möbius strip poem that loops back on itself; a crown of sonnets that take us back to the shock and grief of the twin towers and find deep resonance with paintings by Brueghel; a set of quick improvisations like the motion studies done for a drawing class. Simpson?s work shows us, again and again, the insight and excitement that come from the practice of a necessary craft in the service of a committed vision.


A Word from the Poet
Loop has much to do with the play of poetic forms, some of which are re-worked traditional forms, such as the corona (crown) of sonnets, or the villanelle, and some of which are invented forms: for instance, ?Möbius Strip.? I find that playing with form allows me to play with ideas; it is because I can look at the world aslant by using an unusual form that I can often take hold of an idea in a unique way. These forms invariably loop back on themselves, as is the case with the corona of sonnets, in which the first line of the first sonnet becomes the last line of the last sonnet. In ?Möbius Strip,? as well, there is a clear looping around to the beginning in terms of form. But it is more than that for me: it?s also a case of looping around, or circling around, an idea in order to examine it more fully, so it?s a bit like turning a stone around in the hand.

There are a number of poems in Loop that are deeply attentive to the natural world, and others that take a more political stance, but my concerns come together in that it seems necessary ? indeed, more necessary of late ? to witness the world in all its myriad possibilities. I suppose this opens out to include the possibility of the infinite in a long poem like ?The Trailer Park,? which is, perhaps, a way of seeing a cosmos in a trailer park.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

A NAME, MANY NAMES

I knew you
long before I saw you,
one thing inside another
making itself up. Lightly,
snow fell, kept falling
the night you were born —
like those prayers tied
to branches by the Japanese —
scissored bits of paper,
each one a word:
a name, many names, loose
in the dark.

Later you’ll need a name
that’s door and window, roof
and bed. You’ll need a name to foil
the thief that comes
to live in your heart. But now
you need a name so diaphanous
and small
it takes its shape from air.


Anne Simpson is the author of three books of poetry, Light Falls Through You, winner of the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the Atlantic Poetry Prize; Loop, winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize; and, most recently, Quick. She is also the author of a novel, Canterbury Beach. She lives in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, where she helped establish the Writing Centre at St. Francis Xavier University.


A Word about the Poem by Anne Simpson
I wrote “Name, Many Names” after the birth of my first child.  Snow was falling that night; it was a delicate, shimmering thing in the darkness. Visiting hours were over at the hospital, and even my husband had gone home. I was half-asleep, thinking about what it is to name a child, and I realized that I wanted my son to have one name for the world, and another name that was not for the world at all, but something else — a hidden name. 

Edition details

• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0771080751
• ISBN 13: 9780771080753
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 104