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Origami Dove
The first collection of new poems in more than a decade from one of Canada's most vibrant and original writers.
With her first major collection in ten years, Susan Musgrave displays a range of form and expression that may surprise even her most faithful readers. The quiet, lapidary elegies of “Obituary of Light” are set against the furious mischief of “Random Acts of Poetry...more
With her first major collection in ten years, Susan Musgrave displays a range of form and expression that may surprise even her most faithful readers. The quiet, lapidary elegies of “Obituary of Light” are set against the furious mischief of “Random Acts of Poetry...more
Paperback, 128 pages
Published
March 29th 2011
by McClelland & Stewart
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Origami Dove is the first poetry collection by Canadian author Susan Musgrave in over ten years. It is divided into four section, and the first portion, "Madagascar vanilla", focuses on loss and love, particularly when it comes to a husband and father who suffers from heroine addiction. In "The Room Where They Found You" Musgrave writes "I believed in everything: the hope / in you, your brokenness". The poems are about lost hope and about grieving, they are powerful and tragic. These poems, like...more
My main source of criticism for this collection would be putting Heroines at the end, only because it's so strong and powerfully sad that I wish something had come after so I wasn't left feeling like I've been kicked in the stomach. Musgrave's poetry is everything I aspire to as a poet, and then some.
Here are some of my favourite lines:
Shouldn't it be "Christians are like tea-bags?"
I could never be a heroin addict because I can't stand doing the same thing day after day.
Try to describe a fist...more
Here are some of my favourite lines:
Shouldn't it be "Christians are like tea-bags?"
I could never be a heroin addict because I can't stand doing the same thing day after day.
Try to describe a fist...more
Susan Musgrave's Origami Dove (McClelland & Stewart, 128 pages, $19) shares The Wrecking Light's coppery reek and surprising range of registers.
The Vancouver Island poet's first major collection in 10 years has four radically different sections: sad/wise love poems, spare nature poems, raucous efforts, and a sequence on women from Vancouver's downtown east side.
Which is to say, enough tragedy to break your goddamn heart. But also enough craft to parse it for her readers.
A good example is "Wi...more
The Vancouver Island poet's first major collection in 10 years has four radically different sections: sad/wise love poems, spare nature poems, raucous efforts, and a sequence on women from Vancouver's downtown east side.
Which is to say, enough tragedy to break your goddamn heart. But also enough craft to parse it for her readers.
A good example is "Wi...more
Many of these poems have appeared before, according to the credits, but I hadn't read any of them. I'm not a poet and am not experienced in critiquing poetry but I know what moves me and these poems do. Especially the ones in part four, "Heroines," which Musgrave did as a "script," of sorts for a documentary about heroin-addicted prostitutes from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. They hit me like a punch to the gut. Other poems are likewise powerful and/or darkly or wryly funny, qualities that char...more
I really enjoyed the 'Heroines' sequence to this book -- it is worth the read for that sequence alone. 'Heroines' is also part of a documentary film by photographer Lincoln Clarkes titled 'Heroines: A Photographic Obsession' about the women of the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. Both the film and Susan Musgrave's sequence of poems are very powerful --she is able to give the women a voice without being exploitative -- (esp after I have heard so many Canadian poets take on the voice of the 'prosti...more
What can one say about the amazing Susan Musgrave. Her work is so well crafted and heartfelt. There is a light and a dark side to her work. This is her first major collection in ten years and honestly it has been worth the wait. One section of this book is entitled Obituary of Light - The Sangan River Meditations. It is hard to choose passages to share because there are so many beautiful passages. For example from :Spring (i) In another life , this place was my home.
I feel the rising of forgot...more
I've come to Susan Musgrave late. She'd written a lot of poetry prior to Origami Dove. I missed it and now, riding the sweep of the present, will have to reach back to try and reel in some of it because she writes a muscular verse I don't want to miss.
In a section of Origami Dove called "Obituary of Light" she writes a series of nature poems about the seasons. I especially like this kind of meditative verse in which the poet is sensitive to the ancient and reliable flow of nature around her, in...more
In a section of Origami Dove called "Obituary of Light" she writes a series of nature poems about the seasons. I especially like this kind of meditative verse in which the poet is sensitive to the ancient and reliable flow of nature around her, in...more
Fucking amazing. *And* it features a poem that includes the poetic antics of my friend and mentor Adrienne Gruber. Doesn't get much better than this.
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