White Stone: The Alice Poems (Signal Editions Poetry Series) - Softcover

Bolster, Stephanie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1550650998 ISBN 13: 9781550650990

Publisher: Véhicule Press, 1998

Synopsis

These evocative poems move from the icon of Alice in Wonderland to the imagined figure of Alice out of Wonderland—on a Vancouver beach with the poet, underground with Persephone, in Memphis with Elvis. But first they explore the life of the real Alice Liddell (1852–1934), who sat still for Charles Dodgson's camera and inspired the Alice books that prompted his rise to fame as Lewis Carroll. In this powerful sequence, the emotional life of Alice Liddell as girl and woman is depicted in brilliant narrative juxtapositions. Presented is Alice the creation and Alice the person in a cultural context that, on one level, reexamines cognition and dissociation and on another, liberates the poetic sequence from the monotony of story and closure.

About this title

About the Author

Stephanie Bolster won the Bronwen Wallace Award for Poetry in 1996, The Malahat Review's long poem prize in 1997, and the Norma Epstein Award in 1993. Her poetry has appeared in the anthology Breathing Fire: Canada's New Poets, on the Vancouver and Victoria transit systems, and in over thirty literary journals and anthologies, including The Fiddlehead, Prairie, Schooner, and Descant. Born and raised in Vancouver, she now writes and teaches writing in Ottawa.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

STILL LIFE

I've got it too, that knack for sitting still while inner ticking hammers every

nerve and the universe runs on like a white rabbit, Alice's frantic tardy heart

invisible inside a cage of lace. Now past the need for poses, we let video take us

where and as we are. If I could see her move, know the way her sleeve

folded as she shifted her wrist to write her name, would it be like opening

a door into a garden? I let her history fall shut and move into my moving body.

Victoria's dead, this isn't England, and Alice was never just that taxidermied girl

through Dodgson's lens, that woman's face looming in my dark room.

When the camera turned away, she ran. Since I began to seek her, I've found

love, moved to a land white as a page. I rarely stop to think of her these days.

Edition details

• Publisher: Véhicule Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1550650998
• ISBN 13: 9781550650990
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 96