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Selected Poems
The best of beloved poet Alden Nowlan's explicitly honest, direct, and insightful poetry. Now featuring an introduction by Susan Musgrave. Alden Nowlan, one of Canada's finest and most influential poets, died in 1983. He leaves a rich legacy of poetry that is accessible yet profound, and that speaks to people's lives with wry observation and keen insight. Alden Nowlan Selected Poems is for Nowlan fans and new readers alike. The poems included in this volume reflect the recurring themes that illuminate Nowlan's work, and it is truly the best of his poetry. Above all, this volume is a tribute to a poet who deserves to be treasured for all time.
200 pages, Paperback
First published January 26, 1996
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
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January 13, 20208.5/10
One of my favourites from this collection.
1914-1918
Thinking again of all those young men who were given the same first name,
Canada, once they had reached the place which we in our innocence then
called Overseas, doubtless with the same intonation
as Frankish peasants had used eight centuries earlier
in speaking of the sons who had followed their steely Lords to Outre Mar;
thinking of how a German officer remembered this for half a century as the strangest thing
he saw in four years of war — the Canadians walking,
simply walking, in no apparent order, but like any group of men going anywhere,
into a hailstorm of machine-gun fire that flattened them like wheat,
“They did not even look like soldiers, yet fought like Prussian Guards,”
I wish, as they would have done, who were much like me,
though they were so much younger, that God’s bad brother,
having killed them, had said Enough! and had not proceeded
to prove their deaths were pointless; if they had to die
(and all of us do; oh, all of us do), then I wish
that we could say that we are who we are because they were who they were.
That much, at least, has been given others. I think of names:
Salamanca, Antietam, Leningrad. I think of Polish miners
singing of Polish horsemen, a Cuban schoolchild placing flowers
at a wall filled with old photographs.
All of it lies,
perhaps, or romantic rubbish, though those young men would not have thought it was.
My country has no history, only a past.
One of my favourites from this collection.
1914-1918
Thinking again of all those young men who were given the same first name,
Canada, once they had reached the place which we in our innocence then
called Overseas, doubtless with the same intonation
as Frankish peasants had used eight centuries earlier
in speaking of the sons who had followed their steely Lords to Outre Mar;
thinking of how a German officer remembered this for half a century as the strangest thing
he saw in four years of war — the Canadians walking,
simply walking, in no apparent order, but like any group of men going anywhere,
into a hailstorm of machine-gun fire that flattened them like wheat,
“They did not even look like soldiers, yet fought like Prussian Guards,”
I wish, as they would have done, who were much like me,
though they were so much younger, that God’s bad brother,
having killed them, had said Enough! and had not proceeded
to prove their deaths were pointless; if they had to die
(and all of us do; oh, all of us do), then I wish
that we could say that we are who we are because they were who they were.
That much, at least, has been given others. I think of names:
Salamanca, Antietam, Leningrad. I think of Polish miners
singing of Polish horsemen, a Cuban schoolchild placing flowers
at a wall filled with old photographs.
All of it lies,
perhaps, or romantic rubbish, though those young men would not have thought it was.
My country has no history, only a past.
December 1, 2022
I found this book this summer in the bargain section of Longfellow Books in Portland, Maine and decided to try it for no particular reason. I am rather glad I did.
I love the way Nowlan writes - it is straightforward and real and a bit rough around the edges. His poems are packed with emotion and imagery but don't feel as esoteric as some poetry. I feel that often poets with simple language and straightforward concepts have the most command of their subject and craft. Or perhaps that is just poetry for common folk - the unenlightened - a conclusion which I will happily accept.
I love the way Nowlan writes - it is straightforward and real and a bit rough around the edges. His poems are packed with emotion and imagery but don't feel as esoteric as some poetry. I feel that often poets with simple language and straightforward concepts have the most command of their subject and craft. Or perhaps that is just poetry for common folk - the unenlightened - a conclusion which I will happily accept.
December 13, 2016
I picked up this book after seeing "Weakness" and "It's Good to Be Here" in The Giant Book of Poetry collection. I'm greatly indebted to The Giant Book of Poetry for picking up those two lovely poems by a rather obscure poet, because it got me to read this selection.
I can understand why Nowlan is so little known. His lines and meter are (to my ear) only workmanlike, and he does nothing particularly tricky with his forms. Almost all of the poems are blank verse, and while I liked his word choice, I wasn't often struck by a kind of harmony in the sound and rhythm and meaning of his poems, as sometimes happens with other poets such as Mary Oliver.
But I was struck.
In the pleasant little poem "Johnnie's Poem" he rejoices at his young son's attempt at a poem, not because it's good, but because he (Alden) had told his son to write about what he felt "deepest and hardest" and that is what his son did, by writing about his dying grandfather. And that it what Alden himself does. Moreover, like in "Weakness" and "It's Good to Be Here" he often gets in a staggering last line. Both of those are narrative poems with the killer last lines as the climaxes, but "A Poem about Miracles" and "Old Town Revisited" are fanciful kinds of descriptive poems, I'd call them, and also end with a powerful climactic line.
Still he seems to have specialized in the narrative poem, which appeals to me as a fiction reader come lately to poetry. "A Chance Encounter", "The Rites of Manhood", "The Jelly Bean Man", and "The All Night Diner" all are wonderful story-poems with just a touch of humor and great gushing open-veined caring.
And those poems are only (most of) the superior ones--the ones I'd count myself lucky to see more than three of in a collection. Add the poems that I think are simply good and you've got a collection in which I marked almost half of the poems to reread later.
Nowlan deserves to be better known. I hope I'll be able to contribute to making that happen.
I can understand why Nowlan is so little known. His lines and meter are (to my ear) only workmanlike, and he does nothing particularly tricky with his forms. Almost all of the poems are blank verse, and while I liked his word choice, I wasn't often struck by a kind of harmony in the sound and rhythm and meaning of his poems, as sometimes happens with other poets such as Mary Oliver.
But I was struck.
In the pleasant little poem "Johnnie's Poem" he rejoices at his young son's attempt at a poem, not because it's good, but because he (Alden) had told his son to write about what he felt "deepest and hardest" and that is what his son did, by writing about his dying grandfather. And that it what Alden himself does. Moreover, like in "Weakness" and "It's Good to Be Here" he often gets in a staggering last line. Both of those are narrative poems with the killer last lines as the climaxes, but "A Poem about Miracles" and "Old Town Revisited" are fanciful kinds of descriptive poems, I'd call them, and also end with a powerful climactic line.
Still he seems to have specialized in the narrative poem, which appeals to me as a fiction reader come lately to poetry. "A Chance Encounter", "The Rites of Manhood", "The Jelly Bean Man", and "The All Night Diner" all are wonderful story-poems with just a touch of humor and great gushing open-veined caring.
And those poems are only (most of) the superior ones--the ones I'd count myself lucky to see more than three of in a collection. Add the poems that I think are simply good and you've got a collection in which I marked almost half of the poems to reread later.
Nowlan deserves to be better known. I hope I'll be able to contribute to making that happen.
August 4, 2014
When I was younger I unfairly lumped Nowlan in with a lot of canonical Can-lit poetry. That was a mistake: his voice is vital, irreverent, resonant, and true. It was a real pleasure to read this later rather than never.
November 10, 2021
I have just discovered my favourite poet. Alden Nowlan writes from a place of truth, and he sugar coats nothing. There are so many sticky notes in my copy of this book because there were so many lines and poems that moved me so deeply that I had to mark them for later.
May 16, 2011
Seems so trite to call poetry "moving". If it wasn't, who would read it? I love this little book.
March 31, 2016
I really love Nowlan's economic and sparse verse that so often packs an emotional charge. Especially the poems with clear narratives like Broadcaster's Poem.
June 12, 2014
This book contains many of the poems favoured by Nowlan’s readers, with an introduction by Susan Musgrave and a foreword and second introduction by the editors. These pieces are marked by Nowlan’s characteristic observations of everyday life, his simple and unaffected style and a sense of his haunting tenderness and humanity.
An understanding of Nowlan’s life is a necessary prelude to understanding his poetry. His humble beginnings and life of poverty have affected his choice of content material as well as his style, which changed considerably over the years. Born to a young girl of only fifteen, he was left with his sister in the care of his paternal grandmother. He left school after grade four, and worked in a sawmill as a pulp cutter and mill hand when he was only fourteen. His saving grace was the local library where he discovered his love of books and reading, and which eventually led to a career as a newspaper reporter and poet. As a winner of the Governor General’s Prize for poetry his work has been studied and both loved and criticized for being plain, rural and unsophisticated.
His early work is structured and marked by rhyme and meter. These pieces are shorter and more restrained than his later work which moves into longer pieces of free verse.
Nowlan was a child of the depression and so poverty and struggle is a recurring theme in his work. He drew his subject matter largely from the world he knew, the rural spaces and people he was surrounded by growing up in New Brunswick. So he wrote about cows and hens, pastures and people he had known and identifies by name. He writes of the shame of his out of wedlock conception and birth and the abandonment by his mother. He criticizes those from the “higher classes” and the helping professions with their strict moral order who speak condescendingly to those shackled by poverty and soul destroying loneliness. He painted honest, brutal and touching pictures that some might judge as unsophisticated, but which are full of genuine compassion and humility. He spoke of both the outside world of his characters as well as their interior lives of emotions and feelings. He understood well the world of loneliness and loss and he also sensed the thin line that exists between good and evil.
Nowlan speaks in direct plain language debunking the pretensions of poetry, and said that if truck drivers read poetry, they would read his poems. His goal was accessibility, providing others with an easy path into his work so that they might understand that poetry may be a simple affair that can also be profound and communicate tenderness and humanity. He understood human need and was able to speak to it very clearly.
In his later work his pieces are longer with a style that had evolved to a free verse structure. There is less anger, bitterness and self-doubt in this later work which also extends out from his more regional subjects to include a quiet love of his own country.
A fine collection.
I would have liked to have dates attached to each selection to more fully understand where his choice of content and his life history were connected.
Nowlan's book “The Wanton Troopers” provides some groundwork for exploring his life and appreciating his work. Although it is considered fiction, it is largely based on his life and provides some important details to understanding his inner life.
An understanding of Nowlan’s life is a necessary prelude to understanding his poetry. His humble beginnings and life of poverty have affected his choice of content material as well as his style, which changed considerably over the years. Born to a young girl of only fifteen, he was left with his sister in the care of his paternal grandmother. He left school after grade four, and worked in a sawmill as a pulp cutter and mill hand when he was only fourteen. His saving grace was the local library where he discovered his love of books and reading, and which eventually led to a career as a newspaper reporter and poet. As a winner of the Governor General’s Prize for poetry his work has been studied and both loved and criticized for being plain, rural and unsophisticated.
His early work is structured and marked by rhyme and meter. These pieces are shorter and more restrained than his later work which moves into longer pieces of free verse.
Nowlan was a child of the depression and so poverty and struggle is a recurring theme in his work. He drew his subject matter largely from the world he knew, the rural spaces and people he was surrounded by growing up in New Brunswick. So he wrote about cows and hens, pastures and people he had known and identifies by name. He writes of the shame of his out of wedlock conception and birth and the abandonment by his mother. He criticizes those from the “higher classes” and the helping professions with their strict moral order who speak condescendingly to those shackled by poverty and soul destroying loneliness. He painted honest, brutal and touching pictures that some might judge as unsophisticated, but which are full of genuine compassion and humility. He spoke of both the outside world of his characters as well as their interior lives of emotions and feelings. He understood well the world of loneliness and loss and he also sensed the thin line that exists between good and evil.
Nowlan speaks in direct plain language debunking the pretensions of poetry, and said that if truck drivers read poetry, they would read his poems. His goal was accessibility, providing others with an easy path into his work so that they might understand that poetry may be a simple affair that can also be profound and communicate tenderness and humanity. He understood human need and was able to speak to it very clearly.
In his later work his pieces are longer with a style that had evolved to a free verse structure. There is less anger, bitterness and self-doubt in this later work which also extends out from his more regional subjects to include a quiet love of his own country.
A fine collection.
I would have liked to have dates attached to each selection to more fully understand where his choice of content and his life history were connected.
Nowlan's book “The Wanton Troopers” provides some groundwork for exploring his life and appreciating his work. Although it is considered fiction, it is largely based on his life and provides some important details to understanding his inner life.
August 12, 2015
Fabulous, evocative, thought provoking, vivid.
August 13, 2015
The best book of poetry.
July 27, 2016
I really loved some of these poems. Two of them made me cry. Starting to understand why Fredericton is called "Poet's Corner".
:)
:)
October 21, 2019
Je to veľmi čistá poézia. Dá sa čítať dnes a bude sa dať čítať aj o 100 rokov.
May 24, 2022
Alden Nowlan's poetry is exactly what you need.
January 2, 2023
I don’t know how, but I learned how to appreciate and read and be patient with poetry in the last couple years. These people were especially special.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews