The Snowbird Poems

by Robert Kroetsch

It's a matter of knowing winter. Snowbird travels south, seeks warmth, and begins waiting. Robert Kroetsch's new collection, The Snowbird Poems, is a brilliant flight of departure. Beached where he watches a drowning horizon, teased by romance, Snowbird lets his responses become a message in a bottle to the lost and for the found. Appearing at first wearing bifocals and drinking from a fake coconut, Snowbird goes on to retrieve the footprint of story from the ocean of memory.

Genres: Poetry

120 pages, Paperback

First published September 21, 2000

About the author

Robert Kroetsch was a Canadian novelist, poet, and non-fiction writer. He taught for many years at the University of Manitoba. Kroetsch spent multiple years in Vancouver, British Columbia before returning to Winnipeg where he continued to write. In 2004 he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sunrise and:
a footprint on the bathroom floor.

A happy day, and well a well,
and well the happy, happy O.

But what if the footprint is my own?

And if so, why am I breaking
into a cold sweat?

- footprint, pg. 4

* * *

When obesity replaces chastity
as the subject of our loquacity
we know a cold snap will settle on hell
and winter will get a bum rap.
All is not well that ends not well.

Or if I wait, or if I do not
(on the long beach by the wide sea),
then, or even then, or not,
the ship that had not stopped for me
might well now stop, or maybe
not, or maybe.

A toucan's belly is a tree's boat.
Or a coconut might merely float.

- Snowbird reflects on transmigration, pg. 35

* * *

[Calibrate the sun
with a closed eye.]
[Call is fun.]
[Then, deeply, sigh.]

- eventualities, pg. 47

* * *

They sit facing westward across the warm sea. The sun is rising
at their backs. The sun casts their shadows into the sea.

- another night, another day, pg. 55

* * *

The tall gaunt man bent double,
easily beauty
from unsuspecting stone.

He was become the careful,
rapturous firing of invisible neurons
in his own unfettered mind.

I watched and carelessly dawdled,
here in what was then his studio,
in his yet-to-be-named house -

I watched with careless ease,
not for a moment guessing
he was writing this poem.

- Meeting John Snow 2, pg. 71

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

this one i didn't love as much as Kroetsch's other poems, except for poem for my dead sister, which was amazing.