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Light Falls Through You
"Anne Simpson's vision is multiple and uncanny. An accident that nearly happened becomes a parallel reality. The dead are found flourishing in a transparent realm within the present. Everything is faceted with signs of where it has been and is bound. But this acute perception of past and future comes through in her poems not as nostalgia or fretfulness but as a joyous awareness of the world's complex volatility." -John Steffler
80 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 29, 2022
After many years avoiding the place, I lift the latch
(which disappears as it is touched) and find
you are young as always, while I have closed thousands
of little doors in my skin. Perhaps small words, such as love,
still exist, floating through air in the fat distance. Like kites,
they come back when I pull on them, so I've lost
nothing, not even your hands, full of something discarded:
the nests of birds, complete with eggs, or feathery ostrich ferns.
But look, there is snow on the floorboards, where the wind
brings it under the door. You are in shadow and then light,
as you lean forward. Now I see wrens hiding in your hair,
field mice scampering down your leg. I pause, catching the scent
of earth, and realize your arms are moss, fingers about to blossom -
the wrong season, bu never mind, your eyes are the same,
uncannily. I see everything planted in your unfurling new leaves
and flourishing. I reach out fondly, at the same moment
sunlight falls through you. After all, I should have known
you would dissolve into something clear and unresolved,
like water, and that I would put my hands deep in you
and they would come up empty, wet from the touch of my own face.
* * *
Shave my head,
she told her son. Hair was falling
out in clumps anyway,
and she had no use for it. He didn't
want to do it; think of the care
needed to raze that scalp
egg-smooth. Her husband
came to help and the two of them
worked slowly. She could see
their reflections in the dark
window, felt the little blades
of despair. What if none of this
did any good and she was
pared down
a little at a time? The moon was rising
above the garden, not quite full,
golden and slightly lopsided: a head
like hers. Anything can invade
luminous places. The moon
had marks to show for it.
* * *
All day I fly east, the wide
floor of prairie below
and cloud, in feathers, sometimes
obscuring it. I feel your hands
where they have never been:
soft against the open land
with its small, frozen lakes, stroking
the brushy pines in northern Quebec,
white roads curving into
nowhere. The plane's wing is tipped
with scarlet, even as the sky
wanes, fading to evening, to blue
and deeper blue as we descend
into Montreal. Cup your hands, draw
up that darkness, full of air
and filigree, outlining the river's absence.
The length of the continent's body
is laid out between us. Lean over, gaze at it.
Recall all the things we didn't say:
those insistent clusters of
lights between parks,
plains, miles of wide spaces
where no one lives.
* * *
The Greeks have come. The Trojan queen watches
the rumour becomes a line of ships, lowering
their sails. it begins: measured in years, each
minute marked in blood. Hekuba sees it all before
it happens. She brought up her children to honour
their family: so they will die, wrapped in shrouds,
one beside the other, all for glory, which is nothing
bu a dead hand passed through a living body.
Who'll remember any on of them? They'll end up
the same, eventually, stretches out on a beach,
hacked and torn, wounds marking their chests in red:
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The rowers ship their oars, jump into the water
and bring the boats to land. Hekuba closes the shutters,
stands with her back against them. She knows the way it goes:
war is that trick we practise on each other to see
who can last longest without taking a breath.
* * *
Like a warrior who gives a backward
glance, hesitating just long enough to be caught by an arrow,
at the gate between one part of the sentence and the other.
This is the place where Akhilles falters, looking up at Paris,
who stands on the ramparts watching him die. The words that follow
are the faint, papery sounds of a dying man. Semicolon
has an open mouth and something sharp driven in its heel.
The hero dies. Greeks and Trojans skirmish over the body;
something is lost in the dust. Down by the ships, the warriors
begin to think it's futile. They'd better think of something
quickly, to get them out of this mess: a public relations gimmick,
some sort of trick. It's left to Odysseus to think of a hollow horse
and a plan to save Helen, that bright conjunction between rival
nations. What replaces her when she departs but a wound,
a lick of flame?
* * *
The end of a long sentence about war.
The odd fire still burns in the city. The Greeks look up
from the beach, where they have divided the spoils:
several woman over there, some over here. Victory is
an anticlimax, hardly noticed in the midst of the work
that needs to be done. They leave as mist rises,
exposing what remains: a war that hasn't ended.
It's a hole we fall into again and again.
We fumble in the trenches, gathering our medals
an letters. Then it's time. Our finest hour is the one
no one sees. There's a pause in the march of words,
all moving in the same direction. A breath, a gasp.
Until the sentence takes it up again, trumpeting a theme
of glory, grown stale with time. But from a Greek ship, far
out on the water, comes a woman's keening, high and wild.
* * *
The sprinkler makes its perfect arc, forward and back:
a fan, beaded with tiny gems. Further along,
workmen are tearing up asphalt to plant blue
water mains and the early-morning light slants
over a lawn, its fine blades unhampered by weeds.
Only at the farthest margin a burnt fringe shows: no rain.
None for weeks. The sprinkler's fragile
threads fall to earth, daintily. A woman
in a terry-cloth robe picks at her potted geraniums,
a green van pulls out of a driveway, tinted windows rolling
up, sealing the driver inside. Here is the golf course:
the man-made hills sliding open to a view of steel factories
across the bay. Already the sky is clouded, baroque,
with something pinkish-yellow and stinking.
This grass is clipped close as a shaved face: touch it -
you might be amazed it's real. Someone stops
to cross the road, looking from one side to the other.
Her legs are golden, and the white tassels of her gold shoes swing
and bobble as she strides. We are at the end of a century.
It slopes away from us, the green sliced by knives of light
as far as the polluted lake.
(which disappears as it is touched) and find
you are young as always, while I have closed thousands
of little doors in my skin. Perhaps small words, such as love,
still exist, floating through air in the fat distance. Like kites,
they come back when I pull on them, so I've lost
nothing, not even your hands, full of something discarded:
the nests of birds, complete with eggs, or feathery ostrich ferns.
But look, there is snow on the floorboards, where the wind
brings it under the door. You are in shadow and then light,
as you lean forward. Now I see wrens hiding in your hair,
field mice scampering down your leg. I pause, catching the scent
of earth, and realize your arms are moss, fingers about to blossom -
the wrong season, bu never mind, your eyes are the same,
uncannily. I see everything planted in your unfurling new leaves
and flourishing. I reach out fondly, at the same moment
sunlight falls through you. After all, I should have known
you would dissolve into something clear and unresolved,
like water, and that I would put my hands deep in you
and they would come up empty, wet from the touch of my own face.
- Light Falls Through You, pg. 4-5
* * *
Shave my head,
she told her son. Hair was falling
out in clumps anyway,
and she had no use for it. He didn't
want to do it; think of the care
needed to raze that scalp
egg-smooth. Her husband
came to help and the two of them
worked slowly. She could see
their reflections in the dark
window, felt the little blades
of despair. What if none of this
did any good and she was
pared down
a little at a time? The moon was rising
above the garden, not quite full,
golden and slightly lopsided: a head
like hers. Anything can invade
luminous places. The moon
had marks to show for it.
- A Head Like Hers, pg. 13
* * *
All day I fly east, the wide
floor of prairie below
and cloud, in feathers, sometimes
obscuring it. I feel your hands
where they have never been:
soft against the open land
with its small, frozen lakes, stroking
the brushy pines in northern Quebec,
white roads curving into
nowhere. The plane's wing is tipped
with scarlet, even as the sky
wanes, fading to evening, to blue
and deeper blue as we descend
into Montreal. Cup your hands, draw
up that darkness, full of air
and filigree, outlining the river's absence.
The length of the continent's body
is laid out between us. Lean over, gaze at it.
Recall all the things we didn't say:
those insistent clusters of
lights between parks,
plains, miles of wide spaces
where no one lives.
- Flying East, pg. 28-29
* * *
The Greeks have come. The Trojan queen watches
the rumour becomes a line of ships, lowering
their sails. it begins: measured in years, each
minute marked in blood. Hekuba sees it all before
it happens. She brought up her children to honour
their family: so they will die, wrapped in shrouds,
one beside the other, all for glory, which is nothing
bu a dead hand passed through a living body.
Who'll remember any on of them? They'll end up
the same, eventually, stretches out on a beach,
hacked and torn, wounds marking their chests in red:
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The rowers ship their oars, jump into the water
and bring the boats to land. Hekuba closes the shutters,
stands with her back against them. She knows the way it goes:
war is that trick we practise on each other to see
who can last longest without taking a breath.
- !, pg. 40
* * *
Like a warrior who gives a backward
glance, hesitating just long enough to be caught by an arrow,
at the gate between one part of the sentence and the other.
This is the place where Akhilles falters, looking up at Paris,
who stands on the ramparts watching him die. The words that follow
are the faint, papery sounds of a dying man. Semicolon
has an open mouth and something sharp driven in its heel.
The hero dies. Greeks and Trojans skirmish over the body;
something is lost in the dust. Down by the ships, the warriors
begin to think it's futile. They'd better think of something
quickly, to get them out of this mess: a public relations gimmick,
some sort of trick. It's left to Odysseus to think of a hollow horse
and a plan to save Helen, that bright conjunction between rival
nations. What replaces her when she departs but a wound,
a lick of flame?
- ;, pg. 44
* * *
The end of a long sentence about war.
The odd fire still burns in the city. The Greeks look up
from the beach, where they have divided the spoils:
several woman over there, some over here. Victory is
an anticlimax, hardly noticed in the midst of the work
that needs to be done. They leave as mist rises,
exposing what remains: a war that hasn't ended.
It's a hole we fall into again and again.
We fumble in the trenches, gathering our medals
an letters. Then it's time. Our finest hour is the one
no one sees. There's a pause in the march of words,
all moving in the same direction. A breath, a gasp.
Until the sentence takes it up again, trumpeting a theme
of glory, grown stale with time. But from a Greek ship, far
out on the water, comes a woman's keening, high and wild.
- ., pg. 52
* * *
The sprinkler makes its perfect arc, forward and back:
a fan, beaded with tiny gems. Further along,
workmen are tearing up asphalt to plant blue
water mains and the early-morning light slants
over a lawn, its fine blades unhampered by weeds.
Only at the farthest margin a burnt fringe shows: no rain.
None for weeks. The sprinkler's fragile
threads fall to earth, daintily. A woman
in a terry-cloth robe picks at her potted geraniums,
a green van pulls out of a driveway, tinted windows rolling
up, sealing the driver inside. Here is the golf course:
the man-made hills sliding open to a view of steel factories
across the bay. Already the sky is clouded, baroque,
with something pinkish-yellow and stinking.
This grass is clipped close as a shaved face: touch it -
you might be amazed it's real. Someone stops
to cross the road, looking from one side to the other.
Her legs are golden, and the white tassels of her gold shoes swing
and bobble as she strides. We are at the end of a century.
It slopes away from us, the green sliced by knives of light
as far as the polluted lake.
- Altarpiece, I, pg. 61
November 9, 2025
So many poems about death...I wasn't sure I wanted to continue reading this book due to the subject matter but Canadian poet Anne Simpson dazzled me with her clever writing.
She is such a gifted writer.
For example, in the poem "Small", Simpson writes "death/is a little scarf pulled/through the ears" (p. 33) and in the poem "Grammar Exercise" she writes "death is a space/between words".
In fact, each of her 21 poems under the heading "Souvenirs" reminds me of newspaper clippings that shed some new and different light on tragedies both small and large that have happened over the years.
Inside this section is my favourite poem: "Shoulder of Water, Skin of Air" where she writes "Now I lie floating on the sea's hammock/slung at the four corners of sky." (p. 14) WOW!!!
In the next section "Usual Devices", Simpson experiments using various punctuation marks as titles and motifs for 10 different Greek themed poems.
Her style changes again with the third section "Reliquary" which is actually a long poem, broken into segments and placed together like a casket of bone fragments. Lots of references to bones, skulls, ribs, etc.
The last and fourth section is actually another long poem with 16 parts that play with the worshipping images of golf and the underlying current of violence of the world woven in the background.
Bravo, I say! Some readers, like me, may not always like the subject matter but I am giving this collection five stars for its strength in originality and unique poetic language. This book deserves to be read more than once and I look forward to doing that and exploring more of her work.
She is such a gifted writer.
For example, in the poem "Small", Simpson writes "death/is a little scarf pulled/through the ears" (p. 33) and in the poem "Grammar Exercise" she writes "death is a space/between words".
In fact, each of her 21 poems under the heading "Souvenirs" reminds me of newspaper clippings that shed some new and different light on tragedies both small and large that have happened over the years.
Inside this section is my favourite poem: "Shoulder of Water, Skin of Air" where she writes "Now I lie floating on the sea's hammock/slung at the four corners of sky." (p. 14) WOW!!!
In the next section "Usual Devices", Simpson experiments using various punctuation marks as titles and motifs for 10 different Greek themed poems.
Her style changes again with the third section "Reliquary" which is actually a long poem, broken into segments and placed together like a casket of bone fragments. Lots of references to bones, skulls, ribs, etc.
The last and fourth section is actually another long poem with 16 parts that play with the worshipping images of golf and the underlying current of violence of the world woven in the background.
Bravo, I say! Some readers, like me, may not always like the subject matter but I am giving this collection five stars for its strength in originality and unique poetic language. This book deserves to be read more than once and I look forward to doing that and exploring more of her work.
March 25, 2020
As with all poetry collections there was few I liked and some I didn't care for. "Deer on the Beach" could have been one I liked, however, when she wrote "Once in Africa" I was incredibly frustrated. Where in Africa? It needles me because I could not visualise an entire continent wailing on so little but "of what was lost"--which was what? Using ancient Greek analogy misses the point of coherence in the continent of Africa. Of the 54 countries that make up the continent not every history is the same. The idea may be of loss, in this entire collection, confusion of what is lost. She's lost, we're lost, thus everything is lost--that succeeds!
February 14, 2011
I just don't think I was in the mood for it when I read it because I read a few of her poems in the most recent Praire fire and thought those were stunningly beautiful. Perhaps another collection is more for me or this collection at a different time.
February 21, 2008
A fave for Poetry
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews