JBI
01-04-2009, 08:48 AM
One of my favorite living poets, and I would argue one of the best English language poets around. I figured I would start a thread in order to expand interest, and perhaps share some of her poetry.
As it is, she is a rather difficult poet, being that she works in symbols more than allegories, and is beyond unique. Her poetry is surreal in its formation, and often relies on complex interconnected forms of symbols, which offer often ambiguous, yet beautiful projections.
P. K. Page (Mrs. W.A. Irwin) was born in England and brought up on the Canadian prairies. She was out of the country for many years with her diplomat-husband, Arthur Irwin, and now lives in Victoria, British Columbia. She is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, including three books for children. Among other honours, she has won the Governor General's Award for poetry for The Metal and the Flower (1954).
P.K. Page is the author of The Sun and the Moon, (novel), 1944, pseud. Judith Cape; As Ten as Twenty, (poetry), 1946; The Metal and the Flower, (poetry), 1954; Cry Ararat!--Poems New and Selected, 1967; The Sun and the Moon and Other Fictions, 1973; Poems Selected and New, 1974; ed. To Say the Least, (anthology of short poems), 1979; Evening Dance of the Grey Flies, (poems and a short story), 1981; text for The Travelling Musicians, music by Murray Adaskin, 1984; The Glass Air, (poetry, essays and drawings), 1985; Brazilian Journal, (prose - with drawings), 1988; I--Sphinx, A Poem for Two Voices, for the CBC; A Flask of Sea Water, (fairy story), 1989; The Glass Air - Poems Selected and New, 1991; The Travelling Musicians (children's book) 1991; Unless the Eye Catch Fire,(short story), 1994; The Goat that Flew (sequel to A Flask of Sea Water), 1994; Hologram - A Book of Glosas (poems), 1994; A Children's Hymn, music by Harry Somers, 1995; The Hidden Room -Collected Poems, 1997. Also poems, short stories, essays, art criticism, drawings, in various magazines and anthologies in Canada, Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, Israel, Holland, China, etc.
From: http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/page/bio.htm
from Autumn
Whoever has no house now will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone
Will sit, read, write long letters through the evening
And wander on the boulevards, up and down...
Autumn Day Rainer Maria Rilke
Its stain is everywhere.
The sharpening air
of late afternoon
is now the colour of tea.
Once-glycerined green leaves
burned by a summer sun
are brittle and ochre.
Night enters day like a thief.
And children fear that the beautiful daylight has gone.
Whoever has no house now will never have one.
It is the best and the worst time.
Around a fire, everyone laughing,
brocaded curtains drawn,
nowhere-anywhere-is more safe than here.
The whole world is a cup
one could hold in one's hand like a stone
warmed by that same summer sun.
But the dead or the near dead
are now all knucklebone.
Whoever is alone will stay alone.
Continued here: http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/page/poem2.htm
From After Rain
The snails have made a garden of green lace:
broderie anglaise from the cabbages,
chantilly from the choux-fleurs, tiny veils-
I see already that I lift the blind
upon a woman's wardrobe of the mind.
Such female whimsy floats about me like
a kind of tulle, a flimsy mesh,
while feet in gumboots pace the rectangles-
garden abstracted, geometry awash-
an unknown theorem argued in green ink,
dropped in the bath.
Euclid in glorious chlorophyll, half drunk.
I none too sober slipping in the mud
where rigged with guys of rain
the clothes-reel gauche
as the rangy skeleton of some
gaunt delicate spidery mute
is pitched as if
listening;
while hung from one thin rib
a silver web-
its infant, skeletal, diminutive,
now sagged with sequins, pulled ellipsoid,
glistening.
Continued here: http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/page/poem1.htm
from Deaf Mute in the Pear Tree
His clumsy body is a golden fruit
pendulous in the pear tree
Blunt fingers among the multitudinous buds
Adriatic blue the sky above and through
the forking twigs
Sun ruddying tree's trunk, his trunk
his massive head thick-knobbed with burnished curls
tight-clenched in bud
(Painting by Generalic. Primitive.)
I watch him prune with silent secateurs
Boots in the crotch of branches shift their weight
heavily as oxen in a stall
Hear small inarticulate mews from his locked mouth
a kitten in a box
Pear clippings fall
soundlessly on the ground
Spring finches sing
soundlessly in the leaves
Continued here: http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/page/poem4.htm
As it is, she is a rather difficult poet, being that she works in symbols more than allegories, and is beyond unique. Her poetry is surreal in its formation, and often relies on complex interconnected forms of symbols, which offer often ambiguous, yet beautiful projections.
P. K. Page (Mrs. W.A. Irwin) was born in England and brought up on the Canadian prairies. She was out of the country for many years with her diplomat-husband, Arthur Irwin, and now lives in Victoria, British Columbia. She is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, including three books for children. Among other honours, she has won the Governor General's Award for poetry for The Metal and the Flower (1954).
P.K. Page is the author of The Sun and the Moon, (novel), 1944, pseud. Judith Cape; As Ten as Twenty, (poetry), 1946; The Metal and the Flower, (poetry), 1954; Cry Ararat!--Poems New and Selected, 1967; The Sun and the Moon and Other Fictions, 1973; Poems Selected and New, 1974; ed. To Say the Least, (anthology of short poems), 1979; Evening Dance of the Grey Flies, (poems and a short story), 1981; text for The Travelling Musicians, music by Murray Adaskin, 1984; The Glass Air, (poetry, essays and drawings), 1985; Brazilian Journal, (prose - with drawings), 1988; I--Sphinx, A Poem for Two Voices, for the CBC; A Flask of Sea Water, (fairy story), 1989; The Glass Air - Poems Selected and New, 1991; The Travelling Musicians (children's book) 1991; Unless the Eye Catch Fire,(short story), 1994; The Goat that Flew (sequel to A Flask of Sea Water), 1994; Hologram - A Book of Glosas (poems), 1994; A Children's Hymn, music by Harry Somers, 1995; The Hidden Room -Collected Poems, 1997. Also poems, short stories, essays, art criticism, drawings, in various magazines and anthologies in Canada, Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, Israel, Holland, China, etc.
From: http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/page/bio.htm
from Autumn
Whoever has no house now will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone
Will sit, read, write long letters through the evening
And wander on the boulevards, up and down...
Autumn Day Rainer Maria Rilke
Its stain is everywhere.
The sharpening air
of late afternoon
is now the colour of tea.
Once-glycerined green leaves
burned by a summer sun
are brittle and ochre.
Night enters day like a thief.
And children fear that the beautiful daylight has gone.
Whoever has no house now will never have one.
It is the best and the worst time.
Around a fire, everyone laughing,
brocaded curtains drawn,
nowhere-anywhere-is more safe than here.
The whole world is a cup
one could hold in one's hand like a stone
warmed by that same summer sun.
But the dead or the near dead
are now all knucklebone.
Whoever is alone will stay alone.
Continued here: http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/page/poem2.htm
From After Rain
The snails have made a garden of green lace:
broderie anglaise from the cabbages,
chantilly from the choux-fleurs, tiny veils-
I see already that I lift the blind
upon a woman's wardrobe of the mind.
Such female whimsy floats about me like
a kind of tulle, a flimsy mesh,
while feet in gumboots pace the rectangles-
garden abstracted, geometry awash-
an unknown theorem argued in green ink,
dropped in the bath.
Euclid in glorious chlorophyll, half drunk.
I none too sober slipping in the mud
where rigged with guys of rain
the clothes-reel gauche
as the rangy skeleton of some
gaunt delicate spidery mute
is pitched as if
listening;
while hung from one thin rib
a silver web-
its infant, skeletal, diminutive,
now sagged with sequins, pulled ellipsoid,
glistening.
Continued here: http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/page/poem1.htm
from Deaf Mute in the Pear Tree
His clumsy body is a golden fruit
pendulous in the pear tree
Blunt fingers among the multitudinous buds
Adriatic blue the sky above and through
the forking twigs
Sun ruddying tree's trunk, his trunk
his massive head thick-knobbed with burnished curls
tight-clenched in bud
(Painting by Generalic. Primitive.)
I watch him prune with silent secateurs
Boots in the crotch of branches shift their weight
heavily as oxen in a stall
Hear small inarticulate mews from his locked mouth
a kitten in a box
Pear clippings fall
soundlessly on the ground
Spring finches sing
soundlessly in the leaves
Continued here: http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/page/poem4.htm