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Witness: Selected Poems 1962-2010
Patrick Lane is one of Canada's pre-eminent poets, winner of numerous awards, including the Governor General's Award for Poetry, the Canadian Authors Association Award, the Lieutenant Governor's Award for Literary Excellence and three National Magazine Awards. His distinguished career spans forty-five years and twenty-four volumes of poetry as well as award-winning books of fiction and non-fiction.
Witness is the only volume to cover the breadth of Lane's career and gather up the finest of his work--from early poems penned during his literary beginnings to new poems written at the height of his career. Fierce, piercing, and unflinchingly honest, Lane explores the darker side of human nature and desire even as he looks to the future with a hopeful eye, for "even among words/there are bright seeds hidden . . ."
This striking volume is required reading, not only for fans of Patrick Lane's work, but for poetry lovers and Canadian literature enthusiasts everywhere.
Witness is the only volume to cover the breadth of Lane's career and gather up the finest of his work--from early poems penned during his literary beginnings to new poems written at the height of his career. Fierce, piercing, and unflinchingly honest, Lane explores the darker side of human nature and desire even as he looks to the future with a hopeful eye, for "even among words/there are bright seeds hidden . . ."
This striking volume is required reading, not only for fans of Patrick Lane's work, but for poetry lovers and Canadian literature enthusiasts everywhere.
- GenresPoetry
96 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2010
13 people want to read
About the author
Patrick Lane
85 books39 followersPatrick Lane was born in Nelson, British Columbia, Canada, on March 26, 1939. He has no formal education beyond high school in Vernon, B.C. From 1957 to 1968 with his young wife, Mary, he raised three children, Mark, Christopher, and Kathryn, and began working at a variety of jobs, from common labourer, truck driver, Cat skinner, chokerman, boxcar loader, Industrial First-Aid Man in the northern bush, to clerk at a number of sawmills in the Interior of British Columbia. He has been a salesman, office manager, and an Industrial Accountant. In 1968 his first wife divorced him. Much of his life after 1968 has been spent as an itinerant poet, wandering over three continents and many countries. He began writing with serious intent in 1960, practicing his craft late at night in small-town western Canada until he moved to Vancouver in early 1965 to work and to join the new generation of artists and writers who were coming of age in the early Sixties.
In 1966, with bill bissett and Seymour Mayne, he established Very Stone House, publishing the new post-war generation of poets. In 1968, he decided to devote his life exclusively to writing, travelling to South America where he lived for two years. On his return, he established a new relationship with his second wife, Carol, had two more children, Michael and Richard, and settled first in the Okanagan Valley in 1972 and then in 1974 on the west coast of Canada at Middle Point near the fishing village of Pender Harbour on The Sunshine Coast where he worked as a carpenter and building contractor. In 1978, he divorced and went to work as Writer-in-Residence at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg where he began his life with the poet, Lorna Crozier. Since then, he has been a resident writer at Concordia University in Montreal, The University of Alberta in Edmonton, the Saskatoon Public Library, and the University of Toronto. He taught English Literature at The University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon from 1986 to 1990, and Creative Writing at the University of Victoria, British Columbia from 1991 to 2004. He is presently retired from institutional teaching and leads private writing retreats as well as teaching at such schools as The Banff Writing Workshops, ‘Booming Ground’ at the University of British Columbia, The Victoria Writing School, and The Sage Hill Experience in Saskatchewan. He and his wife, Lorna Crozier, presently reside in a small community outside Victoria where he gardens and works at his craft.
His poetry, short stories, criticism, and non-fiction have won many prizes over the past forty-five years, including The Governor-General’s Award for “Poems: New & Selected” in 1979, The Canadian Authors Association Award for his “Selected Poems” in 1988, and, in 1987, a “Nellie” award (Canada) and The National Radio Award (USA) for the best public radio program for the script titled “Chile,” co-authored with Lorna Crozier. He has received major awards from The Canada Council, The Ontario Arts Council, The Saskatchewan Arts Board, The Manitoba Arts Board, The Ontario Arts Council, and the British Columbia Arts Board. He has received National Magazine awards for both his poetry and his fiction. He is the author of more than twenty books and he has been called by many writers and critics “the best poet of his generation.”
As a critic and commentator, he appears regularly on CBC, the national radio service in Canada, and on numerous other media outlets across Canada.
He has appeared at literary festivals around the world and has read and published his work in many countries including England, France, the Czech Republic, Italy, China, Japan, Chile, Colombia, the Netherlands, and Russia. His poetry and fiction appear in all major Canadian anthologies of English literature. A critical monograph of his life and writing titled "Patrick Lane,” by George Woodcock, was published by ECW Press.
In 1966, with bill bissett and Seymour Mayne, he established Very Stone House, publishing the new post-war generation of poets. In 1968, he decided to devote his life exclusively to writing, travelling to South America where he lived for two years. On his return, he established a new relationship with his second wife, Carol, had two more children, Michael and Richard, and settled first in the Okanagan Valley in 1972 and then in 1974 on the west coast of Canada at Middle Point near the fishing village of Pender Harbour on The Sunshine Coast where he worked as a carpenter and building contractor. In 1978, he divorced and went to work as Writer-in-Residence at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg where he began his life with the poet, Lorna Crozier. Since then, he has been a resident writer at Concordia University in Montreal, The University of Alberta in Edmonton, the Saskatoon Public Library, and the University of Toronto. He taught English Literature at The University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon from 1986 to 1990, and Creative Writing at the University of Victoria, British Columbia from 1991 to 2004. He is presently retired from institutional teaching and leads private writing retreats as well as teaching at such schools as The Banff Writing Workshops, ‘Booming Ground’ at the University of British Columbia, The Victoria Writing School, and The Sage Hill Experience in Saskatchewan. He and his wife, Lorna Crozier, presently reside in a small community outside Victoria where he gardens and works at his craft.
His poetry, short stories, criticism, and non-fiction have won many prizes over the past forty-five years, including The Governor-General’s Award for “Poems: New & Selected” in 1979, The Canadian Authors Association Award for his “Selected Poems” in 1988, and, in 1987, a “Nellie” award (Canada) and The National Radio Award (USA) for the best public radio program for the script titled “Chile,” co-authored with Lorna Crozier. He has received major awards from The Canada Council, The Ontario Arts Council, The Saskatchewan Arts Board, The Manitoba Arts Board, The Ontario Arts Council, and the British Columbia Arts Board. He has received National Magazine awards for both his poetry and his fiction. He is the author of more than twenty books and he has been called by many writers and critics “the best poet of his generation.”
As a critic and commentator, he appears regularly on CBC, the national radio service in Canada, and on numerous other media outlets across Canada.
He has appeared at literary festivals around the world and has read and published his work in many countries including England, France, the Czech Republic, Italy, China, Japan, Chile, Colombia, the Netherlands, and Russia. His poetry and fiction appear in all major Canadian anthologies of English literature. A critical monograph of his life and writing titled "Patrick Lane,” by George Woodcock, was published by ECW Press.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 23, 2016
My favourite poem of Patrick Lane's is 'The Madboy'. I have memorized the poem so I can keep it in my mind forever. The book deserves 5 stars just for that poem.
January 28, 2022
Because I never learned how
to be gentle and the country
I lived in was hard with dead
animals and men I didn't question
my father when he told me
to step on the kitten's head
after the bus had run over
its hind quarters.
Now, twenty years later,
I remember only:
the silence of the dying
when the fragile skull collapsed
under my hard bare heel,
the curved tongue in the dust
that would never cry again
and the small of my father's back
as he walked tall away.
* * *
praise the idea
the disordered care
so the stone
you have placed
for beauty continues
with a studied delight
as if a god
had dropped it.
arrange, arrange
plant within
the casual border
your desire.
this is the web
and the ritual of
the web.
what discipline obtains
what way shall you stand
so your eye observes
nothing? the sand
raked into a sea
and the sea
an illusion of sand.
this garden, sprung
from a desire
for order, remains
a scream. it wants
you to want the
storm. it prepares
for rage, the sudden
irrevocable flood.
* * *
The night is summer
and the hour is heavy with air that moves
like a slow mouth in the leaves of the chestnut,
the branches of the elms.
A boy dances in their shadows.
Across the street in the Legion Hall
music falls upon the dancers.
As the boy moves he imagines
a girl whose breasts
are small perfect pains on her chest
and he wants to touch them.
He has sworn tonight to dance
with a girl who is beautiful.
He does not know his desire
to never be alone again
is the beginning of loneliness.
It is a new kind of fear.
It has entered him like a cage enters
an animal, this thing his body does
moving in awkward grace
with nothing in its arms.
* * *
The generosity of snow, the way it forgives
transgression, filling in the many betrayals
and leaving the world
exactly as it was. Imagine a man
walking endlessly and finding his tracks,
knowing he has gone in a circle. Imagine
his disappointment. See how he strikes out again
in a new direction, hoping this way
will lead him out. Imagine how much
happier he will be this time with the wind
all around him, the wind filling in his tracks.
He is thinking of that man,
of what keeps him going.
The thought of snow,
small white grains sifting
into the holes where his feet went,
filling things in,
leaving no room for despair.
* * *
The Instrument of your poverty
is an infinite departure, the hawk unseen
until you see him without prey
in the bare plum of winter rain.
He rests inside hunger
and he does not sing today.
How rare the gesture we make
with nothing. It is of the spirit an without
value. The bare plum, the winter rain
and the hawk seeing what you cannot say.
These steady accretions, yet allowing them
to stay as you stay with music after music
plays, and of course there is always,
always hunger, and, of course, poverty,
and the bare plum, empty, and the rain.
to be gentle and the country
I lived in was hard with dead
animals and men I didn't question
my father when he told me
to step on the kitten's head
after the bus had run over
its hind quarters.
Now, twenty years later,
I remember only:
the silence of the dying
when the fragile skull collapsed
under my hard bare heel,
the curved tongue in the dust
that would never cry again
and the small of my father's back
as he walked tall away.
- Because I Never Learned, for my brother John, pg. 13
* * *
praise the idea
the disordered care
so the stone
you have placed
for beauty continues
with a studied delight
as if a god
had dropped it.
arrange, arrange
plant within
the casual border
your desire.
this is the web
and the ritual of
the web.
what discipline obtains
what way shall you stand
so your eye observes
nothing? the sand
raked into a sea
and the sea
an illusion of sand.
this garden, sprung
from a desire
for order, remains
a scream. it wants
you to want the
storm. it prepares
for rage, the sudden
irrevocable flood.
- The Garden, pg. 28
* * *
The night is summer
and the hour is heavy with air that moves
like a slow mouth in the leaves of the chestnut,
the branches of the elms.
A boy dances in their shadows.
Across the street in the Legion Hall
music falls upon the dancers.
As the boy moves he imagines
a girl whose breasts
are small perfect pains on her chest
and he wants to touch them.
He has sworn tonight to dance
with a girl who is beautiful.
He does not know his desire
to never be alone again
is the beginning of loneliness.
It is a new kind of fear.
It has entered him like a cage enters
an animal, this thing his body does
moving in awkward grace
with nothing in its arms.
- Dominion Day Dance, pg. 39
* * *
The generosity of snow, the way it forgives
transgression, filling in the many betrayals
and leaving the world
exactly as it was. Imagine a man
walking endlessly and finding his tracks,
knowing he has gone in a circle. Imagine
his disappointment. See how he strikes out again
in a new direction, hoping this way
will lead him out. Imagine how much
happier he will be this time with the wind
all around him, the wind filling in his tracks.
He is thinking of that man,
of what keeps him going.
The thought of snow,
small white grains sifting
into the holes where his feet went,
filling things in,
leaving no room for despair.
- Winter 1, pg. 47
* * *
The Instrument of your poverty
is an infinite departure, the hawk unseen
until you see him without prey
in the bare plum of winter rain.
He rests inside hunger
and he does not sing today.
How rare the gesture we make
with nothing. It is of the spirit an without
value. The bare plum, the winter rain
and the hawk seeing what you cannot say.
These steady accretions, yet allowing them
to stay as you stay with music after music
plays, and of course there is always,
always hunger, and, of course, poverty,
and the bare plum, empty, and the rain.
- The Bare Plum of Winter Rain, pg. 73
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews