Collected Poems of Alden Nowlan

Alden Nowlan, Brian Bartlett, Brian Bartlett

• Publisher: icehouse poetry
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780864929488
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Poésie canadienne

Alden Nowlan (1933-1983) once wrote of a desire to leave behind "one poem, one story / that will tell what it was like / to be alive." In an abundance of memorable poems, he fulfilled this desire with candour and subtlety, emotion, and humour, sympathy and truth-telling. For many years, Nowlan has been one of Canada's most-read and -beloved poets, but only now is the true range of his poetic achievement finally available between two covers, with the publication of Collected Poems of Alden Nowlan.

Nowlan takes us from nightmarish precincts of fear and solitude to the embrace of friendship and family. Delving into experiences of violence and gentleness, of alienation and love, his poetry reveals our shared humanity as well as our perplexing and sometimes entertaining differences. Nowlan's childhood and adult years are colourfully reflected in his poetry. These autobiographical threads are interwoven with fantasies, an astute historical consciousness, and a keen awareness of the shiftings and transformations of selfhood.

Nowlan wrote with formal variety, visually shaping his poems with a dexterity that complicates impressions that he was primarily a "plainspoken" poet. His varied uses of the poetic line — his handling of line-lengths and -breaks, stanzas, and pauses — show him to be a writer who skilfully uses the page to suggest and embody the rhythms of speech. This long-awaited volume enables readers to experience his poetic genius in its fullness and uniqueness.

Between Tears
and Laughter

Intimates and Strangers

How little we know

one another, ever.

Reminders of it:

meeting

an old friend’s wife

for the first time,

sensing how different

he is with her,

hearing him use words

that don’t seem

to belong to him (not

that they are exotic or,

in themselves, important),

perceiving the constraint

in certain familiar

movements, the greater

freedom in others

equally familiar,

as the two of us,

she and I, without willing it,

tug him first one

way, then the other

(for a few moments,

for an instant at the very

least, he is more a stranger

to her than I am

simply because she

knows him so much

better);

or finding anybody

you know well in

any place where one of you

feels at home and not

the other: that is an almost

equally good example

of what I mean — my brother

welcoming me to his office,

the infinitely subtle

falsity, the smile

friendlier by

an iota than it need be.

The Moon Landing

They tell me the moon

has ceased to be mysterious.

But what mystery did it ever

present to them? How many

of them ever even looked at it?

Be honest. Were you ever once

afraid of moonlight,

of what you felt it doing to

your genitals, your spine,

the hair at the back

of your neck?

Were you ever tempted

to bathe naked in it, rolling

in the grass?

When you realized men

were about to land there

was there a moment

when you were frightened

of what might happen

when they touched?

Did you laugh at yourself

childishly won...