Named and Nameless

In this new collection of poetry, Susan McCaslin explores the meaning and significance of identity and all that can be found in a name, or, lack thereof. Mixing the personal with the societal, McCaslin explores her own past and women’s continued role in child-rearing. This dreamlike series of encounters with nature and the divine invites deep reflection through re-discovering the familiar. Her joyful wordplay invites us to notice the tiniest details and contemplate the divine.

“Named & Nameless celebrates I and Thou, the moment when the protagonist meets a specific Other, pursuing some pointed self-examination. Her I Am interrupts, points to the Douglas fir outside her kitchen window, “a tree whose only sentence is sentience.” McCaslin has burst the bounds and bonds of the self in this, her finest work, a metaphysics grounded in eloquent, exquisite observation of the natural world.”

—   Penn Kemp, author of Ordinary/Moving and Lives of Dead Poets

“Susan McCaslin’s new poems are—to echo Hopkins—original, spare, strange. They address Pythagoras, Lao Tzu and Sophia (Wisdom). Attentive to nature and time, they cite sturgeons “whose ancestors emerged / sixty-five-million years ago.” Facing a diminished, threatened world, McCaslin describes “song” not only as “light’s dark” but also as “dark’s light.” In her poetry namelessness honours and calms, yet naming goes on, embracing nature’s vigour and human love. How many other poets evoke enough hope to praise “a pearl of great price / hidden in everyone’s core”?

—   Brian Bartlett, author of The Astonishing Room and Daystart Songflight: A Morning Journal.

“Throughout this beautiful book the poet’s vision is bold and curious and open-hearted.  The unusual titles draw one into a larger world, where the ancient past still abides in the present. In the Fraser River, the sturgeon’s ancestors give a fuller meaning to contemporary fish; while in a neighbour’s back acre, the figure of Lao Tzu silently speaks wisdom. Calling on diverse myths and spiritual traditions, McCaslin offers meditations on a mottled leaf, a mole, a heron. From a child singing in an apple tree, to an elder contemplating her mortality, these poems shine with a sense of eternal connection.”

—   Barbara Colebrook Peace, author of Kyrie and Duet for Wings and Earth.