Earth Words

Conversing with Three Sages

John Reibetanz

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9780228010104
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Canadian Poetry
• Index: Literature

The leaves of paper / butterfly-wing thin / let light stream through / only one side of each.

If "poetry is what we do to break bread with the dead," as Seamus Heaney put it, Earth Words breaks bread with three earlier writers through the glosa, a poetic form that unfolds as a dialogue. The collection inscribes a series of concentric circles, moving outwards from the eleventh-century world of Wang An-shih through the nineteenth century of Henry Thoreau and into the twentieth century with Emily Carr.

Though the environmental and political problems of the twenty-first century feel unique, the figures in this book are met with similar challenges. Wang's writings embody an ideal relationship between self and nature, preserving a sense of rootedness in times resembling the upheavals of the Trump era. This relationship is confirmed in conversations with Thoreau, whose closeness to nature provides an antidote to our age's dependence on digital forms of communication. He also grapples with slavery and the failure to respect the full humanity of Indigenous peoples, struggles that ripple out into the present. Carr's writings and art enter into Indigenous cultures and witness the enduring value of their way of looking at nature. She realizes that the impulse to creatively express one's being runs through the entire natural world.

Culminating in this realization, the concentric circles of Earth Words broaden out to include its twenty-first-century readers as well as its writers in a vision of creative growth.

Table of contents

• COVER
• COPYRIGHT
• CONTENTS
• I Talking with Wang An-shih
• A CALLING
• TRANSPORT
• BUTTERFLIES
• NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY
• THE PATTERN OF YOUR DAYS
• THE VOICING ROOM
• RUINS 1
• RUINS 2
• ANCHORAGE
• ISLANDS 1
• ISLANDS 2
• NOTHING BUT THE WILD RAIN
• SOUNDING THE SILENCES
• DOUBLE EXPOSURE
• THE COUNTRY OF YOUR PAST
• AUTUMN RIVERS
• HARMONIES
• II Walking with Henry Thoreau
• SCOPE
• FIELD OF VISION
• THE HARP
• BATTERY FED
• COMPANIONED
• COMBATANTS
• THE SEA IS ALL ABOUT US
• RUINED FOUNDATIONS
• FUGITIVES
• A NEW WORLD
• A DEEPER WORLD
• TIMBER
• THE RIVER IS WITHIN US
• SEEING DOUBLES
• ROUNDS: ANNUAL
• THE PATTERNS IN YOUR ROUNDS
• ROUNDS: THE CREEL
• III Looking with Emily Carr
• BEYOND
• TREE TALK
• EPPING FOREST
• TWO RUINS
• KITWANCOOL SHANTY
• UNSHELTERED
• BETWEEN FOREST AND SEA
• TOTEMS
• BIRD HOUSE
• MIRROR 1
• ANIMAL TALK
• CALLINGS
• CONNECTIONS
• FOREST SPIRIT
• MIRROR 2
• CLUMSY LIFE AGAIN
• SKIDEGATE SANDS
• NOTES
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS