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 and Nameless
Price range: $14.99 through $19.95
By Susan McCaslin
ISBN:
Book 9781834210032
eBook 9781834210049
Release Date: DELAYED
now we twist in a new gridlock
despite our technological feats
Planet Earth not after all our oyster
egos blusteringly frail
greed apparently limitless
as we pump oceans with toxins
plastics, plug whales’ guts
while honeybees drop
caribou herds languish
scrawny polar bears hunker on melting ice
Despite our shunned prophets
the masses keep buying promises of profits
tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
we’ll tackle climate crisis
displace ourselves from the centre
perhaps too late for a great turning
yet we try to hope cope change
no one knows the end
Cosmic dread settles
over reign of angst malaise
hope shreds shreds of hope
“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.
| Format | Print, ePUB |
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