as if

by E.D. Blodgett

as if there could be no other memory a tree invisible remembering itself In as if, E.D. Blodgett takes readers on journeys of contemplation in which he re-imagines the lyric form. Each line leaves the reader breathless as it runs into the next to form a continuous cycle, a continued breath. The delicate syntax of each piece pushes one forward, ever forward. The poems are Dantesque, leading the traveller through a deeper, darker world. As a collection, as if constitutes an ars poetica of Blodgett's Apostrophes series. The poems explore the elements that make up the series-strict metrical patterns, the possibilities of breath, the endlessness and seamlessness of the spoken word, the incantation.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published March 15, 2014

About the author

Edward Dickinson Blodgett (born 26 February 1935) is a Canadian poet, literary critic, and translator who won the Governor General's Award for poetry in 1996 for his collection Apostrophes: Woman at a Piano.

Born in Philadelphia and educated at Rutgers University, E. D. Blodgett emigrated to Canada in 1966 to work as a literature professor at the University of Alberta.[1]

In 1999, Jacques Brault won the Governor-General's Award for Translation for 'Transfiguration (1998), a translation of Blodgett's poetry.

On July 1, 2007 E.D. Blodgett was appointed the post of Poet Laureate for the City of Edmonton, Alberta.

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

as if by chance a book
had opened on your lap

a book that told of rain
falling and falling on

such small japanese towns
of rain falling through

the pines on ponds and where
the gravel gardens stood

their outlines fading so
that anything that passed

there was soon absorbed
small explosions of

the birds gone without
a trace into the air

- pg. 3

* * *

as if there could be no
other memory

a tree invisible
remembering itself

and all the trees from which
it sprang green and full

of centuries of trees
standing in themselves

- pg. 10

* * *

a leaf that falls again
in you and when you wake

at night the echo of
it resonates against

the mind's ground as if
its autumn could not end

- pg. 24

* * *

from what unsounded well
of silence did the first

syllable begin
to speak declaring that

the reign of silence was
no more eternal but

the measure only of
the psalm as it laid out

a universe of what
was quick and what was dead

- pg. 41

* * *

then the sea itself
appears to be a dream

except for the soft fall
of waves lapping your feet

but in the dream the sound
becomes a soft refrain

music merging so
you dream you are awake

- pg. 60