The Tantramar Re-Vision

Kevin Irie

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780228006374
• eBook ISBN: 9780228007425
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Canadian Poetry
• Index: Literature

I've lived the way a field is sometimes / a shelter for mice / or sometimes a source of game / for a hawk

Inspired by the literary landscape of the late poet John Thompson, Kevin Irie's The Tantramar Re-Vision presents a portrait of nature where the benign and the bedevilled coexist, collude, or collide.

The Tantramar Re-Vision charts routes of discovery as it follows trails, waterways, flights, and fears, be it through the woods, the wilds, the page, or the mind where "it's hard to admit / you are not to your taste." It questions an existence in which the inhuman thrives, ignorant of divinity, while the human psyche continues to search for answers as "life takes directions / away from" it. The Tantramar Marsh setting of John Thompson's Stilt Jack resonates with Irie's landscapes of birds, fish, plants, and wildlife, all still within reach yet part of a world where "wind carries sounds / it cannot hear."

Insightful and meditative, The Tantramar Re-Vision is poetry of the inner self and the outside observer, a poetic testament to the ways literature creates its own landmarks and nature survives without knowing a word.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• RECOGNITION
• DEFEATED (A CONFESSION)
• THE TANTRAMAR RE-VISION
• CROSSING TANTRAMAR MARSH
• CAUTIONARY
• FISHING, TANTRAMAR MARSH
• LURE
• TACKLE GUIDE
• MARSH MAP LEGEND
• WELCOME TO THE MARSH VISITOR CENTRE!
• A CREEK AS COMPLICITY, DUPLICITY, DARING
• CURRENT
• OXBOW AS AGING
• WINDBLOWN
• IN MY JOLICURE WOODS
• THE HUNTER
• THE MINK
• STUDIES IN CONTRAST
• DARK FLIGHTS
• HIERARCHIES, THE NORTHERN HARRIER HAWK
• A CROW’S WING (DEATH NEVER CANCELS)
• LISTENING
• ADDICTION, THE SPRUCE
• BLACK SPRUCE
• THE TRAIL
• FORECAST
• CONSIDERING THE BENIGNITY OF CLOUDS
• CHANGE
• MINT
• RHUBARB
• PERSISTENCE
• ODE TO PRODUCE
• GARBAGE DETAIL
• REPRIMAND
• CARDINAL CONSIDERATIONS
• GRASSES
• RED ALERT
• QUESTIONS
• OCTOBER’S MEADOW
• THE COMPULSION OF SNOW
• THE SILENCE OF SNOW
• WINTER SPARROWS
• NIGHT FEAR
• ENTHRALLMENT (A FAN’S NOTES)
• BLASPHEMIES: ERASURES/EXTRACTIONS FROM JOHN THOMPSON’S STILT JACK
• THE COWS OF NEW BRUNSWICK (HOMESICK)
• HAMMER (NOTE FOR THE BEREAVED)
• NOTES
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS