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Full Moon of Afraid and Craving |
eBook Available
A playful examination of the charged dynamic between home and abroad, between anxiety and desire.
A hometown is a data centre / where the past is stored From a darkly humorous perspective, this book charts a young person’s navigation of narrow definitions of faith, femininity, and family.
Confronting addiction, compulsions, and anxieties, Full Moon of Afraid and Craving explores the strange combination of wonder and longing that makes a life. Across settings rural and urban, Melanie Power’s poems commemorate ordinary moments and everyday characters: a roadside shopkeeper, a neighbourhood linden tree, a great-uncle’s hooch. Interrogating lineage and inheritance, she traces the unsettling shadows that border joy. A series of ambivalent odes pay a winking, Proustian homage to the sense memories of a Roman Catholic millennial upbringing in Newfoundland. The long poem “The Fever and the Fret,” written during pandemic lockdown in Montreal, considers how we re-examine and consolidate our personal and civic pasts in times of crisis, drawing timely parallels to John Keats’s confinement due to illness exactly two centuries prior.
At times wry and lighthearted, at others elegiac and plaintive, the voices in these poems are controlled and confident. Just as the stars in the sky are best viewed at night, this collection embraces darkness to illuminate rays of moonlight.
Confronting addiction, compulsions, and anxieties, Full Moon of Afraid and Craving explores the strange combination of wonder and longing that makes a life. Across settings rural and urban, Melanie Power’s poems commemorate ordinary moments and everyday characters: a roadside shopkeeper, a neighbourhood linden tree, a great-uncle’s hooch. Interrogating lineage and inheritance, she traces the unsettling shadows that border joy. A series of ambivalent odes pay a winking, Proustian homage to the sense memories of a Roman Catholic millennial upbringing in Newfoundland. The long poem “The Fever and the Fret,” written during pandemic lockdown in Montreal, considers how we re-examine and consolidate our personal and civic pasts in times of crisis, drawing timely parallels to John Keats’s confinement due to illness exactly two centuries prior.
At times wry and lighthearted, at others elegiac and plaintive, the voices in these poems are controlled and confident. Just as the stars in the sky are best viewed at night, this collection embraces darkness to illuminate rays of moonlight.
Details
Part of the Hugh MacLennan Poetry Series (number 69 in series)
112 Pages, 5 x 7.5
ISBN 9780228011064
April 2022
Formats: Paperback, eBook
“These poems look with ardour and humour at what’s beloved and what’s hard to love, reminding us that sometimes those are the same things. The nostalgia-laden, trade-marked, pre-packaged baked goods that make us salivate may also make us cringe; the past self whose actions seem shamefully misguided deserves respect and tenderness. Power can do irony as well as any writer of her generation, but she can also do sincerity, goofiness, even reverence. And she does it all memorably and musically - her speakers and characters might mock notions of eloquence and aplomb but Power speaks through a sonnet or a villanelle as vibrantly and gracefully as through an open, expansive lyric. Heartbreaking and hilarious, this is an impressively accomplished first book, wise beyond its years.” Stephanie Bolster, author of A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth
“Melanie Power is a poet of the immediate. Like the feral cats that navigate the alleys and sidewalks of the late capitalist east-coast universe she evokes here - her speaker prowls the crumbling infrastructures of the built world, scratching at the seams of language and landscape. What she is surrounded by - rocks, Fun Dip, roadways, roadkill, frozen cakes - ‘all things viscous’ (and ‘vicious’) and ‘sweet’ is what she interrogates. At hand are the fundamentals of a poetry in the lineage of squirrelers of image and rhyme such as Paul Muldoon, and closer to home, Ken Babstock, and Mary Dalton. There is something unerringly honest about these poems that doesn’t so much make one want to cling to the thing being observed, as revel in the briefest glimpses of these treasures caught and rendered with impeccable care - and just as quickly -released into air.” Sina Queyras, author of My Ariel
“… [There] is an incantatory power in many of these poems … her lines sing, regardless of their subject. … I’ll remember [this book] for Melanie Power’s endearing candour, wise-self-effacement, and for the subtle music.” - David B. Hickey, The Antigonish Review
“Full Moon of Afraid and Craving is like a dreamy, atmospheric stroll through time and memory, reflecting on the different pieces which make up a life, from the snacks you are, the clothes you wore, the desires you had, and the places you lived. Power’s poems are beautiful little slices of the past, finding core memories in an array of corners, from the memorable to the mundane. A strong debut.” The Miramichi Reader
"Melanie Power’s debut collection of poems, Full Moon of Afraid and Craving, has layers. Like a decadent cake that makes you laugh, salivate, then sing in awe at the passage of time. Like Aubrey Plaza’s acting - you’ll never know if she really means what she says. But that’s half the fun. The other half is exquisite craft. From odes to processed food to a birthday party attended by past selves, it’s OK to let the easy reading fool you - in no time you’ll be craving more, buying a six-pack of Vachon’s ½ Moon just because of poetry." Carlos A. Pittella
“Melanie Power is a poet of the immediate. Like the feral cats that navigate the alleys and sidewalks of the late capitalist east-coast universe she evokes here - her speaker prowls the crumbling infrastructures of the built world, scratching at the seams of language and landscape. What she is surrounded by - rocks, Fun Dip, roadways, roadkill, frozen cakes - ‘all things viscous’ (and ‘vicious’) and ‘sweet’ is what she interrogates. At hand are the fundamentals of a poetry in the lineage of squirrelers of image and rhyme such as Paul Muldoon, and closer to home, Ken Babstock, and Mary Dalton. There is something unerringly honest about these poems that doesn’t so much make one want to cling to the thing being observed, as revel in the briefest glimpses of these treasures caught and rendered with impeccable care - and just as quickly -released into air.” Sina Queyras, author of My Ariel
“… [There] is an incantatory power in many of these poems … her lines sing, regardless of their subject. … I’ll remember [this book] for Melanie Power’s endearing candour, wise-self-effacement, and for the subtle music.” - David B. Hickey, The Antigonish Review
“Full Moon of Afraid and Craving is like a dreamy, atmospheric stroll through time and memory, reflecting on the different pieces which make up a life, from the snacks you are, the clothes you wore, the desires you had, and the places you lived. Power’s poems are beautiful little slices of the past, finding core memories in an array of corners, from the memorable to the mundane. A strong debut.” The Miramichi Reader
"Melanie Power’s debut collection of poems, Full Moon of Afraid and Craving, has layers. Like a decadent cake that makes you laugh, salivate, then sing in awe at the passage of time. Like Aubrey Plaza’s acting - you’ll never know if she really means what she says. But that’s half the fun. The other half is exquisite craft. From odes to processed food to a birthday party attended by past selves, it’s OK to let the easy reading fool you - in no time you’ll be craving more, buying a six-pack of Vachon’s ½ Moon just because of poetry." Carlos A. Pittella
Melanie Power is a Montreal-based writer from Newfoundland. Full Moon of Afraid and Craving is her first book.
Ode to McCain’s Deep’n Delicious Cake 3
The Real Pleiades 6
Your Past Selves Attend Your Birthday Party 9
Basel Penpal 11
Ode to Great-Uncle Will’s Shine 14
Light of a Fractured Moon 16
After Apple-Picking 19
If You Answer Yes to Any of the Following Questions 21
Elegy to 17 22
After Midnight 23
Ode to the ½ Moon 25
Antigonish at Dawn 29
it hurt to be nowhere 31
Magic Show 33
I Should Have Guessed 35
Names like quartz in the mouth 36
Harvest 37
Picking Season 38
Across the Marshes 41
archipelago 43
Ode to Tunnock’s Caramel Log 45
Frost in October 48
Roman Aubade 50
Ode to Sleep 51
sfogliatella 53
Elegy for the Linden Tree 56
Iceberg in Ferryland 57
Power’s Store 59
My Father’s Father 61
I have not always been as careful as I am now 64
The Fever and the Fret
I. Rue Garnier 65
II. Avenue Querbes 70
III. Avenue St-Marc 72
IV. Rue Clark 73
V. Rue Saint-Dominique 76
VI. Avenue de Normanville 81
I come home to remember why I have to leave again 91
Shaar Hashomayim Cemetery 92
Andromeda 94
the stone 95
Purple Balloons 97
Notes 101
Acknowledgments 103
The Real Pleiades 6
Your Past Selves Attend Your Birthday Party 9
Basel Penpal 11
Ode to Great-Uncle Will’s Shine 14
Light of a Fractured Moon 16
After Apple-Picking 19
If You Answer Yes to Any of the Following Questions 21
Elegy to 17 22
After Midnight 23
Ode to the ½ Moon 25
Antigonish at Dawn 29
it hurt to be nowhere 31
Magic Show 33
I Should Have Guessed 35
Names like quartz in the mouth 36
Harvest 37
Picking Season 38
Across the Marshes 41
archipelago 43
Ode to Tunnock’s Caramel Log 45
Frost in October 48
Roman Aubade 50
Ode to Sleep 51
sfogliatella 53
Elegy for the Linden Tree 56
Iceberg in Ferryland 57
Power’s Store 59
My Father’s Father 61
I have not always been as careful as I am now 64
The Fever and the Fret
I. Rue Garnier 65
II. Avenue Querbes 70
III. Avenue St-Marc 72
IV. Rue Clark 73
V. Rue Saint-Dominique 76
VI. Avenue de Normanville 81
I come home to remember why I have to leave again 91
Shaar Hashomayim Cemetery 92
Andromeda 94
the stone 95
Purple Balloons 97
Notes 101
Acknowledgments 103
