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The following is excerpted from A Journey with No Maps: A Life of P.K. Page by Sandra Djwa.
The
reality of Pat’s life in Victoria, especially her first Christmas, was strange
and bleak; there was no snow, and “grey rain” fell. Yet from this experience
emerged the splendid “Stories of Snow,” one of a handful of poems by Page that
demonstrate her mastery of the craft of poetry. Lionel’s aunt, her son Jim
Burchett and wife Betsy, who lived in Victoria, made Christmas as happy as they
could for the bereaved family. There was a traditional Christmas dinner with
all the trimmings, and carols afterwards. Among the guests was a Dutchman,
Pierre Timp, well known in the city as a horticulturalist. He began to tell
stories about Holland that Pat found “very very fascinating, very beautiful. He
said that on Christmas day in Holland, they used to go out swan hunting on ice boats.
And the images of ice boats – swan hunting … It seemed extraordinary to me.”
The images stayed with
her. “Stories of Snow” is a long poem (by her standards) of fifty-one lines.
Such poems came to her only in bits and pieces. Occasionally, they began as
images, sometimes as lines: “Very often it’s a rhythm I hear that doesn’t have
words at all, and I have to fit words to the rhythm. Sometimes it’s an image,
also that doesn’t have words at all, and sometimes it will be a few words … out
of which can grow … the poem.” “Stories of Snow” begins with a narrator
speaking of those in milder latitudes who dream of snow as imaged in crystal
globes that “hold their snowstorms circular, complete.” Here, in Victoria, “where
the leaves are large as hands / … one will waken / to think the glowing linen
of his pillow / a northern drift.” The story shifts to Holland, wherehunters
arise and part the flakes and go
forth
to the frozen lakes in search of swans –
the
snow light falling white along their guns,
their breath in plumes.The
hunters sink their fingers in the down of the dead swan’s feathers and
experience “that warm metamorphosis of snow.”And
stories of this kind are often told
in
countries where great flowers bar the roads
with
reds and blues which seal the route to snow –
as
if, in telling, raconteurs unlock
the
colour with its complement and go
through
to the area behind the eyes
where
silent, unrefractive whiteness lies.
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