Field Notes for the Self

Randy Lundy

ISBN 10: 0889776911 / ISBN 13: 9780889776913

Published by University of Regina Press, CA, 2020

About this Item

Field Notes for the Self is a series of dark meditations: spiritual exercises in which the poem becomes a forensics of the soul. The poems converse with Patrick Lane, John Thompson, and Charles Wright, but their closest cousins may be Arvo Pärt's tintinnabulations-overlapping structures in which notes or images are rung slowly and repeatedly like bells. The goal is freedom from illusion, freedom from memory, from "the same old stories" of Lundy's violent past; and freedom, too, from the unreachable memories of the violence done to his Indigenous ancestors, which, Lundy tells us, seem to haunt his cellular biology. Rooted in exquisitely modulated observations of the natural world, the singular achievement of these poems is mind itself, suspended before interior vision like a bit of crystal twisting in the light. "Dispassionate yet impassioned, stark yet bristling with images, the poems encompass contradiction and expansion." - Arc Poetry Magazine Praise for Randy Lundy: "Here is a poet of whom one can say-quietly, simply, with gratitude-that highest of praises: the real thing." - Jane Hirshfield, author of The Beauty "Randy Lundy has entered the place where the masters reside." - Patrick Lane, author of Washita.

Seller Inventory # LU-9780889776913

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Field Notes for the Self
• Publisher: University of Regina Press, CA
• Publication Date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0889776911
• ISBN 13: 9780889776913
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: New
• Weight: 182 grams

About this title

Synopsis

Field Notes for the Self is a series of dark meditations: spiritual exercises in which the poem becomes a forensics of the soul

The poems converse with Patrick Lane, John Thompson, and Charles Wright, but their closest cousins may be Arvo Pärt’s tintinnabulations—overlapping structures in which notes or images are rung slowly and repeatedly like bells. The goal is freedom from illusion, freedom from memory, from “the same old stories” of Lundy’s violent past; and freedom, too, from the unreachable memories of the violence done to his Indigenous ancestors, which, Lundy tells us, seem to haunt his cellular biology. Rooted in exquisitely modulated observations of the natural world, the singular achievement of these poems is mind itself, suspended before interior vision like a bit of crystal twisting in the light.

Praise for Randy Lundy:

“Here is a poet of whom one can say—quietly, simply, with gratitude—that highest of praises: the real thing.” —Jane Hirshfield, author of The Beauty

“Randy Lundy has entered the place where the masters reside…” —Patrick Lane, author of Washita

About the Author

Award-winning poet Randy Lundy is a Cree, Irish, and Norwegian member of the Barren Lands First Nation, Brochet, Manitoba. Born in Thompson, Manitoba, he lived most of his life in Saskatchewan before recently taking a teaching position at University of Toronto, Scarborough.