And Yet: Poems - Softcover

Steffler, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0771094523 ISBN 13: 9780771094521

Publisher: McClelland & Stewart, 2020

Synopsis

A former Poet Laureate of Canada and finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize returns with a wide-ranging new collection of poems.

CBC Best Canadian Poetry of 2020
 
 
In John Steffler's luminous collection, And Yet, dreams, memory and desire are forms of wilderness that burst into our daily lives, inspiring us to see ourselves and the world anew. Exuberant, powerful, even prescient, the poems confront the unknown and unexpected around and within us and call up our impulse to resist certainty and finality. The flimsiest shelter might seem best; a trail guide's house is revealed as a forest beyond names. What is outside might be most desired; a suit of clothes gazing into a mirror longs to become an iguana. In the title poem, a road-weary traveller comes in sight of the longed-for home--yet at the last minute turns away. Restless in their own language, the poems muster the impact of direct sensory experience and remind us what it means to live closer to the physical world. At times their attenuated forms acquire the anxious beauty of Giacometti sculptures. Our capacity for surprising change, these poems suggest, is both a cause for caution and a reason to hope that we can reinvent ourselves and transform our destructive technological culture.

About this title

About the Author

JOHN STEFFLER is the author of six books of poetry, including Lookout, which was shorlisted for the Griffin Prize, The Grey Islands, and That Night We Were Ravenous. His novel The Afterlife of George Cartwright won the Smithbooks/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. From 2006 to 2008 he was Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Since Life Values Nothing Higher than Life


and because animate matter always has at its core
a soft quick, and brains and hearts need to be nearly
mush, the great currencies have all been versions
of flint. (Even the earth favours gladiators over
poets, limestone makes its bullion from thick
skulls and teeth, only once in a lucky while we find
fossils of flowers or tongues.) But those pure

hard tools for cutting and smashing survive the millennia
still clearly describing their vanished opposite,
the hot flowering beauty their makers fed and defended.
I claim this, that all the axes, spears, arrows,
swords and daggers were for guarding tender life, not
ripping it. I claim this. I claim this. I claim this. Shut up.
I claim this claim this claim this claim this claim this claim this

Edition details

• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0771094523
• ISBN 13: 9780771094521
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128