What do you think?
Rate this book
Ninety seasons: Modern poems from the Maritimes
160 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1974
1 person want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 17, 2015
"Blue is my sky peter
And white my frayed gull.
We had begun to sail
Into the milky magma,
the gull’s cry
and the moon’s tail
beyond the glassy posts and the squeaking cordage
where the long waves leap
and the crests of wind reform their ragged continents.
Voices that cry out at the world’s end
or here on the sky’s anvil,
fraught with space, will have no ears.
All sights and sounds are a perished wake,
are the lost bearings of the unfound star
which hides no haven in a waxing light.
Attempts to measure the sun’s long spoke by day
in a ladder of cloud
will make no way
through the wrinkled shroud.
There will be no world there when we are there,
and no one to know, even the lone hand
at the wheel
whose face is caught in a tanned and wrinkled dream.
Drugged by water and wind
into the dream of the water’s vertical eye,
armed with no measure of the fathom’s track
we sink and die
and rise again unknown,
and knowing no release
no certain bound,
our misty bodies die and rise
and are nowhere found to us who never cease
and never return to the lost world
or a new world found."
(“The Unreturning” by Alfred G. Bailey, p.27)
"Each colour is an act, blue is an act of grace.
Red is a shiver as felt in a fever.
Gold remains the glory of the face
of earth, but green is the giver."
(from “Colour Chart” by Alfred G. Bailey, p.29)
"While the sun smote
The harbourside and town
With the full weight of noon"
(from “The Launching of the Forest P. Waterman” by William A. Bauer, p.43)
"The moon is a mighty magnet. It draws
With all its force
The foaming tides
Up the long reaches
Of the shore.
Also it raises the tides of blood and life
In menstruous women
Twisting their bowels and bellies."
(from “The Moon Is A Mighty Magnet” by Elizabeth Brewster, p.48)
"Only at night, in the stillness, low and plain
You can hear the far deep rumour of sea on stone."
(from “Back Road Farm” by Charles Bruce, p.57)
"Only the apple trees recall the dream
That flowered here- in love and sweat and growth,
Anger and longing. Tough and dark and wild,
Grown big of stump, rough in the bark and old,
They still put forth a light ironic bloom
Against the green utility of spruce."
(from “Orchard in the Woods” by Charles Bruce, p.61)
"Woven in the slap of water on fluent gravel."
(from “Words Are Never Enough” by Charles Bruce, p.63)
"Words are never enough; these are aware
Somewhere deep in the soundless well of knowing,
That sea, in the flesh and nerves and the puzzling mind
Of children born to the long grip of its tide,
Must always wash the land’s remotest heart.
These are the fellows who keep the salt in the blood."
(from “Words Are Never Enough” by Charles Bruce, p.64)
"Then let what you tell rise as a myth
real as the wind with no begin or end;
let lovers never know
we stay where they have been."
(from “Don’t Mention” by Eddie Clinton, p.66)
"At the edges
of the midnight fields
time is breathing
in the rib cage
of each abandoned hay rake."
(from “Night Poem in New Glasgow” by Robert Cockburn, p.71)
"and the sea is here
where air carries it
washing daylight white"
(from “A Dog in a Dream” by Robert Gibbs, p.91)
"In that darkness,
a luminous ring
with innumerable rooms where the dead
hibernate;
doorways opening into a centre hall
where a party’s in full swing."
(from “Death As A Helix of Drunken Owls” by Sunyata MacLean, p.108)
"Cold cleaves my face.
The sky blazes apocalyptic with stars."
(from “Snow Songs #18” by Alden Nowlan, p.112)
"I think of ice in springtime breaking in the night,
And all along my northern river
Hammered by the moon,
Men and women smiling from their sleep
To dream how soon the winter-punished earth
Will blossom for a season like their flesh."
(from “Cologne” by Kay Smith, p.128)
And white my frayed gull.
We had begun to sail
Into the milky magma,
the gull’s cry
and the moon’s tail
beyond the glassy posts and the squeaking cordage
where the long waves leap
and the crests of wind reform their ragged continents.
Voices that cry out at the world’s end
or here on the sky’s anvil,
fraught with space, will have no ears.
All sights and sounds are a perished wake,
are the lost bearings of the unfound star
which hides no haven in a waxing light.
Attempts to measure the sun’s long spoke by day
in a ladder of cloud
will make no way
through the wrinkled shroud.
There will be no world there when we are there,
and no one to know, even the lone hand
at the wheel
whose face is caught in a tanned and wrinkled dream.
Drugged by water and wind
into the dream of the water’s vertical eye,
armed with no measure of the fathom’s track
we sink and die
and rise again unknown,
and knowing no release
no certain bound,
our misty bodies die and rise
and are nowhere found to us who never cease
and never return to the lost world
or a new world found."
(“The Unreturning” by Alfred G. Bailey, p.27)
"Each colour is an act, blue is an act of grace.
Red is a shiver as felt in a fever.
Gold remains the glory of the face
of earth, but green is the giver."
(from “Colour Chart” by Alfred G. Bailey, p.29)
"While the sun smote
The harbourside and town
With the full weight of noon"
(from “The Launching of the Forest P. Waterman” by William A. Bauer, p.43)
"The moon is a mighty magnet. It draws
With all its force
The foaming tides
Up the long reaches
Of the shore.
Also it raises the tides of blood and life
In menstruous women
Twisting their bowels and bellies."
(from “The Moon Is A Mighty Magnet” by Elizabeth Brewster, p.48)
"Only at night, in the stillness, low and plain
You can hear the far deep rumour of sea on stone."
(from “Back Road Farm” by Charles Bruce, p.57)
"Only the apple trees recall the dream
That flowered here- in love and sweat and growth,
Anger and longing. Tough and dark and wild,
Grown big of stump, rough in the bark and old,
They still put forth a light ironic bloom
Against the green utility of spruce."
(from “Orchard in the Woods” by Charles Bruce, p.61)
"Woven in the slap of water on fluent gravel."
(from “Words Are Never Enough” by Charles Bruce, p.63)
"Words are never enough; these are aware
Somewhere deep in the soundless well of knowing,
That sea, in the flesh and nerves and the puzzling mind
Of children born to the long grip of its tide,
Must always wash the land’s remotest heart.
These are the fellows who keep the salt in the blood."
(from “Words Are Never Enough” by Charles Bruce, p.64)
"Then let what you tell rise as a myth
real as the wind with no begin or end;
let lovers never know
we stay where they have been."
(from “Don’t Mention” by Eddie Clinton, p.66)
"At the edges
of the midnight fields
time is breathing
in the rib cage
of each abandoned hay rake."
(from “Night Poem in New Glasgow” by Robert Cockburn, p.71)
"and the sea is here
where air carries it
washing daylight white"
(from “A Dog in a Dream” by Robert Gibbs, p.91)
"In that darkness,
a luminous ring
with innumerable rooms where the dead
hibernate;
doorways opening into a centre hall
where a party’s in full swing."
(from “Death As A Helix of Drunken Owls” by Sunyata MacLean, p.108)
"Cold cleaves my face.
The sky blazes apocalyptic with stars."
(from “Snow Songs #18” by Alden Nowlan, p.112)
"I think of ice in springtime breaking in the night,
And all along my northern river
Hammered by the moon,
Men and women smiling from their sleep
To dream how soon the winter-punished earth
Will blossom for a season like their flesh."
(from “Cologne” by Kay Smith, p.128)
Displaying 1 of 1 review