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list price: $19.95
edition:Paperback
also available: eBook
category: Poetry
published: Mar 2002
ISBN:9780773519107
publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press

The Afterlife of Trees

by Brian Bartlett

tagged: canadian
Description

From "The Afterlife of Trees" /Neither sheep nor cows crisscross our lives as much./Trees dangle apples and nuts for the hungry, throw/shade down for lovers, mark sites for the lost,/and first and last are/utterly themselves,/fuller and finer than any letter or number,/any 7 or T. Their fragmentary afterlife goes on/in a guitar's body and a hockey stick, in the beaked faces/up a totem pole and the stake through a vampire's heart,/in a fragrant cheese-board, a Welsh love-spoon,/a sweat-stained axe handle, a giant green dragonfly suspended from the ceiling with twine,/in the spellbinding shapechanging/behind a glass woodstove-door...

About the Author

Brian Bartlett

A professor of literature and creative writing at St. Mary's University, Brian Bartlett (1953) won the 2000 Petra Kenney Poetry Competition. In 1997 he won the Malahat Review Long Poem Prize for the second time. He was born and raised in New Brunswick, and as an undergraduate at the University of New Brunswick, he was part of the circle of writers who gathered at "Windsor Castle," Alden Nowlan's home. Bartlett has published many books of poetry and non-fiction, including The Watchmaker's Table, Ringing Here & There: A Nature Calendar, and Wanting the Day: Selected Poems.
Editorial Reviews

On The Afterlife of Trees: "Trees are 'utterly themselves,' Brian Bartlett writes in the title poem of The Afterlife of Trees, and the same could be said of the poet himself, whose textured, learned poems are full of keen observation and deep reverence for the natural world. 'The star-jammed / blackness nearly threw me on my back,' he says in another poem. It is a great pleasure to see that sky, and the world beneath it, through Bartlett's eyes." Carole Glasser Langille, author of In Cannon Cave ----- On Granite Erratics: "For a number of years, and without fanfare, Brian Bartlett has been quietly providing us with some of our best poetry ... No series of review quotations can do justice to the density and nuance, the lush foliation of Bartlett's diction ... This is poetry that is thick and suggestive; its rhythm both subtle and sinewy." Ross Leckie, author of The Authority of Roses ----- "Bartlett's poetry has granite strength and texture and something of an ammonite about it - a sense of connection with history and continuity. There is a tenderness to his poems too which makes them very moving. I find them a constant delight." Barbara Colebrook Peace, author of Kyrie


"Bartlett's poetry has granite strength and texture and something of an ammonite about it - a sense of connection with history and continuity. There is a tenderness to his poems too which makes them very moving. I find them a constant delight." Barbara Colebrook Peace, author of Kyrie

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