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Earth WordsConversing with Three Sages |
eBook Available
Poems exploring what three writers from the past can tell us about our relationship to the planet.
The leaves of paper / butterfly-wing thin / let light stream through / only one side of each.
If “poetry is what we do to break bread with the dead,” as Seamus Heaney put it, Earth Words breaks bread with three earlier writers through the glosa, a poetic form that unfolds as a dialogue. The collection inscribes a series of concentric circles, moving outwards from the eleventh-century world of Wang An-shih through the nineteenth century of Henry Thoreau and into the twentieth century with Emily Carr.
Though the environmental and political problems of the twenty-first century feel unique, the figures in this book are met with similar challenges. Wang’s writings embody an ideal relationship between self and nature, preserving a sense of rootedness in times resembling the upheavals of the Trump era. This relationship is confirmed in conversations with Thoreau, whose closeness to nature provides an antidote to our age’s dependence on digital forms of communication. He also grapples with slavery and the failure to respect the full humanity of Indigenous peoples, struggles that ripple out into the present. Carr’s writings and art enter into Indigenous cultures and witness the enduring value of their way of looking at nature. She realizes that the impulse to creatively express one’s being runs through the entire natural world.
Culminating in this realization, the concentric circles of Earth Words broaden out to include its twenty-first-century readers as well as its writers in a vision of creative growth.
If “poetry is what we do to break bread with the dead,” as Seamus Heaney put it, Earth Words breaks bread with three earlier writers through the glosa, a poetic form that unfolds as a dialogue. The collection inscribes a series of concentric circles, moving outwards from the eleventh-century world of Wang An-shih through the nineteenth century of Henry Thoreau and into the twentieth century with Emily Carr.
Though the environmental and political problems of the twenty-first century feel unique, the figures in this book are met with similar challenges. Wang’s writings embody an ideal relationship between self and nature, preserving a sense of rootedness in times resembling the upheavals of the Trump era. This relationship is confirmed in conversations with Thoreau, whose closeness to nature provides an antidote to our age’s dependence on digital forms of communication. He also grapples with slavery and the failure to respect the full humanity of Indigenous peoples, struggles that ripple out into the present. Carr’s writings and art enter into Indigenous cultures and witness the enduring value of their way of looking at nature. She realizes that the impulse to creatively express one’s being runs through the entire natural world.
Culminating in this realization, the concentric circles of Earth Words broaden out to include its twenty-first-century readers as well as its writers in a vision of creative growth.
Details
Part of the Hugh MacLennan Poetry Series (number 64 in series)
128 Pages, 5 x 7.5
ISBN 9780228009016
October 2021
Formats: Paperback, eBook
"Thirty years after P.K. Page brought the glosa to our collective dazzled attention, John Reibetanz takes a poetic form that is inarguably the one most enthusiastically appropriated by many Canadian poets and makes it abundantly his own. A verse strategy designed to bring one poet into intimate, if brief, conversation with another is given the page-turning sweep of intellectual narrative in three multi-glosa dialogues between Reibetanz and Wang An-shih, Henry Thoreau, and Emily Carr. As in all meaningful, lifelong one-on-ones, his exchanges with his reclusive mandarin, bushwhacking Transcendentalist, and rainforest mystic are pensive, polemical, humourous, lyrical, confiding, philosophical, and generously searching. A lifetime of reading, deep thinking and profound appreciation makes the glosas in Earth Words the most remarkable poems in Reibetanz's already impressive career." John Barton, author of Lost Family: A Memoir
"'I've been searching for you, teacher,' John Reibetanz writes to Wang An-shih; 'Walk with me, Henry,' he addresses Thoreau; and to Emily Carr, 'Fast forward on your part, rewind on mine.' With great humanity and astonishing control of craft, Reibetanz invites his readers into cross-generational encounters with three 'seers.' Each poem is both a superb glosa and an invitation to learn what unites us with these lives of vastly different sensibilities, challenges, and dangers. With a light touch and a careful aesthetic, Reibetanz responds to his encounters with exquisite small tracts of lightness, beauty, and wisdom." Maureen Hynes, author of Sotto Voce
"'I've been searching for you, teacher,' John Reibetanz writes to Wang An-shih; 'Walk with me, Henry,' he addresses Thoreau; and to Emily Carr, 'Fast forward on your part, rewind on mine.' With great humanity and astonishing control of craft, Reibetanz invites his readers into cross-generational encounters with three 'seers.' Each poem is both a superb glosa and an invitation to learn what unites us with these lives of vastly different sensibilities, challenges, and dangers. With a light touch and a careful aesthetic, Reibetanz responds to his encounters with exquisite small tracts of lightness, beauty, and wisdom." Maureen Hynes, author of Sotto Voce
John Reibetanz has written twelve previous collections and is a fellow of Victoria College and senior fellow at Massey College, University of Toronto.
I. Talking with Wang An-shih 3
A Calling 4
Transport 6
Butterflies 8
Nothing Gold Can Stay 10
The Pattern of Your Days 12
The Voicing Room 14
Ruins 1 16
Ruins 2 18
Anchorage 20
Islands 1 22
Islands 2 24
Nothing but the Wild Rain 26
Sounding the Silences 28
Double Exposure 30
The Country of Your Past 32
Autumn Rivers 34
Harmonies 36
II. Walking with Henry Thoreau 39
Scope 40
Field of Vision 42
The Harp 44
Battery Fed 46
Companioned 48
Combatants 50
The Sea Is All About Us 52
Ruined Foundations 54
Fugitives 56
A New World 58
A Deeper World 60
Timber 62
The River Is Within Us 64
Seeing Doubles 66
Rounds: Annual 68
The Patterns in Your Rounds 70
Rounds: The Creel 72
III. Looking with Emily Carr 75
Beyond 76
Tree Talk 78
Epping Forest 80
Two Ruins 82
Kitwancool Shanty 84
Unsheltered 86
Between Forest and Sea 88
Totems 90
Bird House 92
Mirror 1 94
Animal Talk 96
Callings 98
Connections 100
Forest Spirit 102
Mirror 2 104
Clumsy Life Again 106
Skidegate Sands 108
Notes 111
Acknowledgments 115
A Calling 4
Transport 6
Butterflies 8
Nothing Gold Can Stay 10
The Pattern of Your Days 12
The Voicing Room 14
Ruins 1 16
Ruins 2 18
Anchorage 20
Islands 1 22
Islands 2 24
Nothing but the Wild Rain 26
Sounding the Silences 28
Double Exposure 30
The Country of Your Past 32
Autumn Rivers 34
Harmonies 36
II. Walking with Henry Thoreau 39
Scope 40
Field of Vision 42
The Harp 44
Battery Fed 46
Companioned 48
Combatants 50
The Sea Is All About Us 52
Ruined Foundations 54
Fugitives 56
A New World 58
A Deeper World 60
Timber 62
The River Is Within Us 64
Seeing Doubles 66
Rounds: Annual 68
The Patterns in Your Rounds 70
Rounds: The Creel 72
III. Looking with Emily Carr 75
Beyond 76
Tree Talk 78
Epping Forest 80
Two Ruins 82
Kitwancool Shanty 84
Unsheltered 86
Between Forest and Sea 88
Totems 90
Bird House 92
Mirror 1 94
Animal Talk 96
Callings 98
Connections 100
Forest Spirit 102
Mirror 2 104
Clumsy Life Again 106
Skidegate Sands 108
Notes 111
Acknowledgments 115
