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That Night We Were Ravenous
A beautiful new edition of the award-winning collection from Canada’s new Poet Laureate.
Newfoundland-born poet John Steffler is one of this country’s most accomplished writers. Recently named Canada’s national poet, he is the author of The Grey Islands (poems) and the award-winning novel The Afterlife of George Cartwright, both of which have become classics in our time.
That Night We Were Ravenous is Steffler’s most recent book of new poetry. In this extraordinary gathering of poems, he follows the trajectory of some of his earlier work with poems situated in Newfoundland’s coves, on trails, and in communities that testify to the pure bite and edge of this terrain. Other poems in the later sections of the book, more intimate, are set in Southern Ontario and Greece.
This is poetry that captures the imagination and activates the heart. Simply by looking through Steffler’s eyes, we come away with an enlarged sense of the natural world on the one hand, and of our own humanity on the other.
Newfoundland-born poet John Steffler is one of this country’s most accomplished writers. Recently named Canada’s national poet, he is the author of The Grey Islands (poems) and the award-winning novel The Afterlife of George Cartwright, both of which have become classics in our time.
That Night We Were Ravenous is Steffler’s most recent book of new poetry. In this extraordinary gathering of poems, he follows the trajectory of some of his earlier work with poems situated in Newfoundland’s coves, on trails, and in communities that testify to the pure bite and edge of this terrain. Other poems in the later sections of the book, more intimate, are set in Southern Ontario and Greece.
This is poetry that captures the imagination and activates the heart. Simply by looking through Steffler’s eyes, we come away with an enlarged sense of the natural world on the one hand, and of our own humanity on the other.
- GenresPoetry
118 pages, Paperback
First published April 4, 1998
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August 2, 2012
The word “kludge” kept popping into my mind while reading John Steffler’s That Night We Were Ravenous.” For me, most of the diction seemed oddly cobbled together. Since I enjoy poetry that leaps and makes unusual juxtapositions, I was prepared to embrace this collection. Instead, I ended up disliking the book.
Although I love vivid images, Steffler seems to have a tin ear for how they fit within an individual poem. Time after time I would begin a poem, willing to follow a lovely phrase or an unconventional association, only to crash at a huge image or abstraction that undermines both theme and structure.
One example is “The Cobs Fatten, But Every So Often.” Although this is an innocuous poem within the collection, I think it demonstrates Steffler’s uneven diction. At the beginning of the poem, he presents an interesting vision of “ghost mountains marching through the sky” (30), and “rolling grey foothills”(30) has a soft rolling sound. Then, by the end of this short poem, “rough mockery rumbles down” (30), and it ends with the “old power to ravage and burn”(30). The sights and sounds of the prehistoric world abruptly disappear, and I felt estranged from the natural world, bludgeoned by a lecture.
“Into the Night” is a more extreme example of forced coexistence of warring dictions. The poem is populated with “olive trees,” “grape leaves,” a “huge moon” and a childhood sky” (78). Suddenly the poem’s texture is ruptured when, “Owls’ voices / pogo up at the moon all over the countryside” (78). Although I appreciate the novelty of the word “pogo,” it seems out of place in a shadowy night world. I also had trouble relating the word to owls.
After the pogo-ing owls, the poem ends with another lecture; “Great goddess, since you are real, / art is the only work of any worth” (78). I am guessing that the reference to art points back to the “lamplit page” at the beginning, but I found the abstraction extremely intrusive, telling me exactly how to read the poem, and slamming the door on what the night world might say.
“In Waterloo”(48) offers the hilarious idea of “Helen in marketing” and “Theseus in systems analysis”(48). Instead of developing the conceit, the third stanza shifts into a hypnotic rhythm: “… and their cars slide into their garages …” (48). Taken on its own, the stanza neatly conflates suburban repetition with the ennui of T.S. Eliot. As the poem continues, Steffler uses a colloquial voice to capture the sterility and rootlessness of professional enclaves when he writes, “no mastodons sniffed one another’s arseholes there …” (48).
But the poem finally ends with science-fiction images of “television screen hernias” (49), and “bubbles blown out of L.A” (49). At this point, I couldn’t work up enough energy to care why he chose to end the poem with yet another shift in style. To me, it seemed as if three different poems were shackled together in one piece.
Although I love vivid images, Steffler seems to have a tin ear for how they fit within an individual poem. Time after time I would begin a poem, willing to follow a lovely phrase or an unconventional association, only to crash at a huge image or abstraction that undermines both theme and structure.
One example is “The Cobs Fatten, But Every So Often.” Although this is an innocuous poem within the collection, I think it demonstrates Steffler’s uneven diction. At the beginning of the poem, he presents an interesting vision of “ghost mountains marching through the sky” (30), and “rolling grey foothills”(30) has a soft rolling sound. Then, by the end of this short poem, “rough mockery rumbles down” (30), and it ends with the “old power to ravage and burn”(30). The sights and sounds of the prehistoric world abruptly disappear, and I felt estranged from the natural world, bludgeoned by a lecture.
“Into the Night” is a more extreme example of forced coexistence of warring dictions. The poem is populated with “olive trees,” “grape leaves,” a “huge moon” and a childhood sky” (78). Suddenly the poem’s texture is ruptured when, “Owls’ voices / pogo up at the moon all over the countryside” (78). Although I appreciate the novelty of the word “pogo,” it seems out of place in a shadowy night world. I also had trouble relating the word to owls.
After the pogo-ing owls, the poem ends with another lecture; “Great goddess, since you are real, / art is the only work of any worth” (78). I am guessing that the reference to art points back to the “lamplit page” at the beginning, but I found the abstraction extremely intrusive, telling me exactly how to read the poem, and slamming the door on what the night world might say.
“In Waterloo”(48) offers the hilarious idea of “Helen in marketing” and “Theseus in systems analysis”(48). Instead of developing the conceit, the third stanza shifts into a hypnotic rhythm: “… and their cars slide into their garages …” (48). Taken on its own, the stanza neatly conflates suburban repetition with the ennui of T.S. Eliot. As the poem continues, Steffler uses a colloquial voice to capture the sterility and rootlessness of professional enclaves when he writes, “no mastodons sniffed one another’s arseholes there …” (48).
But the poem finally ends with science-fiction images of “television screen hernias” (49), and “bubbles blown out of L.A” (49). At this point, I couldn’t work up enough energy to care why he chose to end the poem with yet another shift in style. To me, it seemed as if three different poems were shackled together in one piece.
Displaying 1 of 1 review