Stumbling In The Bloom

by John Pass

Winner - Governor General's Award (2006) The poems in Stumbling in the Bloom engage the ever-present enticements and entanglements of beauty on life's, and art's, home ground - in wilderness and garden. But this surprising volume, the finale of John Pass's quartet of poetry books, At Large, takes intriguing side trips on the home-stretch, including a wry excursion to the chiropractor, a fanciful flight from a student driver's parallel parking practice, up an "Everest" in Alberta, and on a singularly moving Canadian journey towards and away from the "ground zero" of the 9/11 tragedy. The book, and Pass's aesthetic, come to rest finally on a fulcrum, a paradox, of acceptance: the embrace of uncertainty and unhappy accident that purpose and effort alone make possible.

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published July 29, 2005

Reviews

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have been working my way through the Governor General's Award winning books of poetry, and John Pass won for this book in 2006. Early on he establishes a strong poetic aesthetic featuring long lines, references to the natural world, and phrases that skip and jump. He often mixes tenses, plurals, and perspectives, which creates a good deal of tension. I don't think this is really my taste, but I appreciate it.

I didn't connect to many individual poems, per se. Many seemed to be more about interesting play of phrase and rhythm than about anything in particular; thus, there were moments that caught my attention, but it was hard to pick a favourite poem.

There was a very good poem about owls and another about a worn out friendship.

[Magdelanye · Rating 4 out of 5]

...everything
is contingent, not partial, not by numbers, not
by degrees. A whole
moment of illumination surges
one standing in it's richly furnished room forever
gazing at the carpet.
from the poem 50 degrees Fahrenheit p35

It is lines like these that keep me returning to the poems of John Pass. His precise choice of words and his precise placement of them give them a certain authority and shine. When he writes about nature the reader is enclosed by foliage and can almost smell the exquisite flowers

the fiction of meaning
sprawled like a sail on the sea
from Emphatic p28

I love that phrase and its complex simplicity. Lines like that stand out for me, and some of his poems carry that lyricism through. He loses me sometimes however, even in some of the shorter pieces, in a cloud of words that do not connect for me and clutter some of the longer poems with a bit of a pompous flavour. That said, there are enough gems here to make this a book worth tussling with. Especially I love the long 'rewrite.doc', and the thrilling 'Everest" as well as the intimate 'Fifty Degrees Fahrenheit' and the wonderful Stand:Wildwood BC.

Here in the dignity....
stand not against, not for,
but with what the earth roots and raises.
from Stand p74

Thats well enough to knock this up to 4/5 5/7

I had not meant to talk myself into silence. P111