Adele Wiseman, lifelong writing friend of Margaret Laurence, is best know for her novels, The Sacrifice, winner of the Governor-General’s Award in 1956, and Crackpot, Winner of the Canadian Booksellers Association Award in 1974. She also wrote essays, plays, and children’s books. Her poetry, the work of the last ten years of her life, and mostly unpublished, ranges in form from haiku to sonnets to subversive feminist epic; in content from poems about poetry (“Instructions for Poems in Progress”), to love poems (“In Our Play”), to nature poems (“Mysteries of Flight”), to family poems, and to political poems, including “The Dowager Empress Suite.” This is Adele Wiseman writing in her most personal voice. The Dowager Empress: Selected Poems by Adele Wiseman rounds out our knowledge of a major Canadian writer.
“I found many delightful surprises in this collection by the late Adele Wiseman, most notably her pithy haikus and short poems. Wiseman was known primarily as a novelist, so who would have expected such a wide poetic range—from the acerbic “Mopping Up” to the gently lyrical “What is the Night?” Elizabeth Greene deserves kudos for bringing together this book of poetry by one of our major authors.”
—Kenneth Sherman
“Adele Wiseman, who was first and always a novelist, spent the final decade of her life writing poetry. Here, in this original selection of her poems, we hear a voice that extends our understanding of one of Canada’s most important writers of the twentieth century.”
—Ruth Panofsky, author of The Force of Vocation: The Literary Career of Adele Wiseman
“Elizabeth Greene’s The Dowager Empress makes an important contribution to Canadian literature by introducing readers both here and abroad to Adele Wiseman’s powerful poetry. Wiseman was an important and talented Canadian writer who has been unjustly neglected – a phenomenon which Greene, in both this book and We Who Can Fly, seeks to rectify. The poems in The Dowager Empress are, like Wiseman’s prose, direct, passionate, and strong, and Greene, herself an accomplished poet, helpfully situates Wiseman’s poems in the context of her larger oeuvre and her life. The result—both for those of us who are already admirers of Wiseman and those who are new to her work—is illuminating and a delight.”
—Nora Gold, author of The Dead Man, Fields of Exile, and Marrow and Other Stories
“In “Mopping Up” Adele writes specifically about what she called “alternative voices.” It was something that she sincerely cared about, and, in 1989, when Indigenous literature was still in its infancy, and I had nothing more than a bundle of unpublished poems and a few big dreams, she invited me to The Banff Centre’s Writers’ Workshop. What immediately comes to mind was her mother-bear presence and generosity, and especially for the fledging writer a deep understanding of the human condition – as glimpsed in these poems.”
—Armand Garnet Ruffo, author of Treaty #
Renée Knapp –
The Dowager Empress: Poems by Adele Wiseman by Elizabeth Greene
reviewed by The Malahat Review – May 1, 2020
http://www.malahatreview.ca/reviews.html
Excerpt:
“Like Wiseman herself, the poetry collected here incorporates both the ethereal and the everyday, the popular and the marginal, the timely and the timeless. In curating the poems from over 330 pieces while consulting with the poet’s friends, colleagues, scholars, and, notably, her daughter, Greene shows a deep sensitivity to what can be assumed to be Wiseman’s own vision.”
Inanna Admin –
The Dowager Empress: Poems by Adele Wiseman edited by Elizabeth Greene
reviewed by The Minerva Reader – June 1, 2020
https://www.theminervareader.com/
Nothing dies that is remembered. I heard that I was very young and for the life of me, (and the life of Google) I can’t find the source. (If you, dear Reader, knows the answer, be sure to let me know.)
When I picked up a copy of The Dowager Empress: Poems of Adele Wiseman by superb poet and novelist Elizabeth Greeene, unbidden came the thought that nothing dies that is read.
The goal of The Minerva Reader is to sing the the praises of work you might have missed. I wanted to shine a light of love and attention on an unsung hero and so, to read this work was particularly poignantly meaningful because Adele Wiseman never saw these poems published. She never got to stand in the spotlight with them or see them venture out into the world. As we around the world are learning, we are apart but not alone and this message is more important than ever. I agree with Elizabeth Greene that these poems were far too good to end up alone in an archival box but should be shared, read, enjoyed and discussed.
I particularly loved the haikus and observations of the writing process as well as the powerful short poems and the breadth of emotions and insights.
And perhaps you think poetry is not for you? Adele Wiseman wrote novels and screenplays for most of her life, coming late to poetry. I urge non-poetry readers to give poetry at try and start with this book. You’ll be astonished at how succinctly the work sum up so much. We fall in love with music for the lyrics as well as the melody, so allow these lyrics to sing to you and your heart will find the accompanying melody.