What do you think?
Rate this book
Earthly Pages: The Poetry of Don Domanski
With "The Cape Breton Book of the Dead," Don Domanski emerged as a remarkable new voice in Canadian poetry, combining formal conciseness with broad cosmic allusions, constant surprise with brooding atmospherics, and innovative syntax with delicate phrasings. In subsequent collections, Domanski's poetry has deepened and expanded, with longer lines and more complex structures that journey into the far reaches of metaphor. Now, with "Earthly Pages: The Poetry of Don Domanski," the long-awaited first selection from his books, readers have a chance to experience the full range of his work in one volume.
Editor Brian Bartlett, in his introduction, "The Trees are Full of Rings, ," discusses Domanski's engagement with nature and the transformative power of his metaphors; his poetic bestiary amd mythical underpinnings; and his kinship to poets like Stevens, Whitman, and Rumi. Like these poets, Domanski is drawn to borderlands between the physical and the spiritual, the unconscious and the conscious. His poetry finds a home for demons and angels, spiders and wolves--and for kitchens and back alleys, forests and stars.
In language both fluent and hypnotic, Domanski maintains an awareness of both the magnitudes and the minutiae that live beyond language. In "Flying Over Language," an essay written specifically for this volume, the poet explains that for him metaphor is one way to suggest the wealth of being that poetry can only point toward.
- GenresPoetry
78 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2007
21 people want to read
About the author
Don Domanski
20 books6 followersDon Domanski was born and raised on Cape Breton Island and now lives in Halifax. He has published eight books of poetry, two of which were short-listed for the Governor General’s Award, and in 1999 he won the Canadian Literary Award for Poetry. Published and reviewed internationally, his work has been translated into Czech, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 25, 2022
old phoenix you rise
out of morning tea
out of a single cup
left by itself on the kitchen table
old gal, old wart, your celtic pounds
simply balance the house when it teeters
your remedies never cure
your advice is always wrong
your kindness drowns cats
and overwaters the geranium
old grandmother, old sister, old wife,
old sweetheart, old heart in pre-War condition
what carries your soft body
to breakfast?
what sly tongue has chatted your head awake?
* * *
nothing will change
you place roses in the ocean
red roses the red oars of Odysseus
tired after the long journey
to the world's end
to the world's end you bring
the stroke of a hammer
and the weight of a single nail
you build unnoticed things there
the things Odysseus built
the purl and darkness of a moth
hung upon a web
the talons of a bee carrying death
moving the water over you like a sheet
as if you could sleep or rest
or stop coming back into this world
as if the war were over
or the journey purged of its animal smell.
* * *
after Sunday dinner
they were talking about politics in the next room
while I was sewing dust into my hair
painting my legs
to match the swaying grass beside the road
putting on a sweater the colour of heated water
poured from a tine kettle into a bath
I knew there was no use in hiding from you
but I try in my way to keep the day sacred
to keep it invisible to conceal just a bit
of myself from your eyes
from your angel-bitten fingers
and beside they were already arguing about religion
which is really about the river that runs
through their conversations
carrying each word into nocturnal fields
where it becomes a shadow hunched over a stone
a stone that would fill a mouth or a glass
a stone you could throw into the wind
which wouldn't come back or land
but travel like a perfect forehead
into the sky.
* * *
the candle in the window
waits for it match to be born
looks out onto a night
of clouds and stars
listens to the sound of walking
beneath day-old footprints
along the river bank
watches the cat filled with scissors
chase the mouse filled with paper
under the awning of dahlias and roses
it is not a religious candle
or a romantic candle
but one for when the lights
of the world go out
for when the earth is wrong
for the bride who falls headlong
into the oil-paddled sea
for the baby lost in mid-air
the husband missing in a room
it is a final decision
the last white breath against
the window pane
before the ogre attacks
it is a candle for when
the maelstrom comes
with its many orbits
of ciphering heads
its ten thousand passions
expanding infinitely
its black diapason pushing
into edgeless space.
* * *
after many sorrows and thoughts broken
body pains and blows to the heart
after living in poorer lands
with human company in every mirror
I remember what the bestiary said
and allowed the deer of the slender sadness
to take my voice and my hearing
the wolf of the impenetrable eyes
to remove my flesh and bone
the salmon to take my spirit
and I lay on lichens worn clean
by whispers close to the ground
so that I was the nothingness there
with only the beetle's breath to carry me till morning.
* * *
these bids are all the wedding dresses of the world
these trees all the brides waiting
you can begin no journey here without marriage
when I arrive I knew the shadow
would be long and hard to follow
shadow of a matchmaker stretching thinly through the grass
but I came to walk here
to marry the heartbeats that collect
on birch leaves after rain has fallen
the minute ones without home or chest in which to beat
without blood to send pouring through the silence
I love what can't been seen I marry what can't be seen
and so walk through the forest via homages
the invisible knowing of no hand that it hasn't held
no hand without a wedding ring like a quiet storm
moving round a finger
why gold that carries every moment darkened on currents
studies on one flesh
every bird in the air.
out of morning tea
out of a single cup
left by itself on the kitchen table
old gal, old wart, your celtic pounds
simply balance the house when it teeters
your remedies never cure
your advice is always wrong
your kindness drowns cats
and overwaters the geranium
old grandmother, old sister, old wife,
old sweetheart, old heart in pre-War condition
what carries your soft body
to breakfast?
what sly tongue has chatted your head awake?
- Beldam, pg. 1
* * *
nothing will change
you place roses in the ocean
red roses the red oars of Odysseus
tired after the long journey
to the world's end
to the world's end you bring
the stroke of a hammer
and the weight of a single nail
you build unnoticed things there
the things Odysseus built
the purl and darkness of a moth
hung upon a web
the talons of a bee carrying death
moving the water over you like a sheet
as if you could sleep or rest
or stop coming back into this world
as if the war were over
or the journey purged of its animal smell.
- Hammerstroke II, pg. 17
* * *
after Sunday dinner
they were talking about politics in the next room
while I was sewing dust into my hair
painting my legs
to match the swaying grass beside the road
putting on a sweater the colour of heated water
poured from a tine kettle into a bath
I knew there was no use in hiding from you
but I try in my way to keep the day sacred
to keep it invisible to conceal just a bit
of myself from your eyes
from your angel-bitten fingers
and beside they were already arguing about religion
which is really about the river that runs
through their conversations
carrying each word into nocturnal fields
where it becomes a shadow hunched over a stone
a stone that would fill a mouth or a glass
a stone you could throw into the wind
which wouldn't come back or land
but travel like a perfect forehead
into the sky.
- A Perfect Forehead, pg. 25
* * *
the candle in the window
waits for it match to be born
looks out onto a night
of clouds and stars
listens to the sound of walking
beneath day-old footprints
along the river bank
watches the cat filled with scissors
chase the mouse filled with paper
under the awning of dahlias and roses
it is not a religious candle
or a romantic candle
but one for when the lights
of the world go out
for when the earth is wrong
for the bride who falls headlong
into the oil-paddled sea
for the baby lost in mid-air
the husband missing in a room
it is a final decision
the last white breath against
the window pane
before the ogre attacks
it is a candle for when
the maelstrom comes
with its many orbits
of ciphering heads
its ten thousand passions
expanding infinitely
its black diapason pushing
into edgeless space.
- Excathedra, for Anne Michaels, pg. 30
* * *
after many sorrows and thoughts broken
body pains and blows to the heart
after living in poorer lands
with human company in every mirror
I remember what the bestiary said
and allowed the deer of the slender sadness
to take my voice and my hearing
the wolf of the impenetrable eyes
to remove my flesh and bone
the salmon to take my spirit
and I lay on lichens worn clean
by whispers close to the ground
so that I was the nothingness there
with only the beetle's breath to carry me till morning.
- What the Bestiary Said, pg. 48
* * *
these bids are all the wedding dresses of the world
these trees all the brides waiting
you can begin no journey here without marriage
when I arrive I knew the shadow
would be long and hard to follow
shadow of a matchmaker stretching thinly through the grass
but I came to walk here
to marry the heartbeats that collect
on birch leaves after rain has fallen
the minute ones without home or chest in which to beat
without blood to send pouring through the silence
I love what can't been seen I marry what can't be seen
and so walk through the forest via homages
the invisible knowing of no hand that it hasn't held
no hand without a wedding ring like a quiet storm
moving round a finger
why gold that carries every moment darkened on currents
studies on one flesh
every bird in the air.
- Banns, pg. 52
December 20, 2021
A master. He intuitively walked in close proximity of next dimension before he traveled there too soon. Brilliant poet.
February 16, 2025
I’ll never finish reading Don Domanski’s words. Even now he is such good company, and such a generous teacher, always saying just the right thing to blow your mind.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews