Undone - Softcover

Goyette, Susan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1894078330 ISBN 13: 9781894078337

Publisher: Brick Books, 2004

Synopsis

Undone is a cornucopia of passionate poems arranged into three sections. "Forgotten" has mostly to do with the aftermath of a heart-rending breakup; "Kindred" features poems on fellow artists in poetry, music and painting (ranging from Georgia O'Keeffe to Snoopy, beagle-novelist); in "Apprentice," leaving is transformed into celebration, poem after poem about fierce loving of a world that we will have to leave. In these hard-hitting, highly personal poems, lamentation is a key note. Crushing loneliness weighs heavily on the spirit. But Sue Goyette has ways of sharing pain with a compensating lift: wonderful flights of metaphor, language charged with verbal energy. "Isn't that our job," she asks, "to coax out the light in the story?" It's a job she takes to heart and performs brilliantly.

The poems in Undone have the amplitude proper to "watching wide" - a discipline good for seeing shooting stars and, as this book illustrates, all other kinds of light in a darkness palpable but never enveloping, not when probed so truly and sung so beautifully.

"If I had to do it again, I'd place a stethoscope on the heart of us
Sooner. I'd prescribe Neruda, not the despair but the slow blossom of 20 kisses.

Goodbye, goodbye to the slippery duvet of this bed. The cold floor
of awake and how hope can have insomnia, spend the whole night wishing.

Heartbreak is a geological occurrence."

from "A Version of Courage"

About this title

About the Author:

Susan Goyette lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia with her two teenagers. Her first Brick book, The True Names of Birds (1998), was short-listed for the Gerald Lampert, Pat Lowther and Governor General's Awards for poetry. Her novel Lures was short-listed for The Thomas Raddall Award for Fiction. She has been a member of the faculty at The Maritime Writers' Workshop, The Banff Wired Studio and Sage Hill. She is currently finishing her second novel.

Review:

"Goyette's eye for what Bronwen Wallace called othe stubborn particulars, ' along with her heart-stopping metaphorical leaps, show us grief as tender gestures of the everyday ... Her wisdom here is in showing us how we keep on keeping on, our arms, like her long lines, reaching into the depths, gathering, reaching again"--Lorri Neislen Glenn, The Antigonish Review

"These are intimate, revealing poems of great courage and confidence."--Angela Hibbs, Matrix

"There is not a poem in Undone that falters or seems uncertain. Her work is tight enough to hold water, skillfully made, full like an arc."--Jay Ruzesky, The Malahat Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Brick Books
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1894078330
• ISBN 13: 9781894078337
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 156