Undone

by Sue Goyette

Undone is a cornucopia of passionate poems arranged into three sections. "Forgotten" has mostly to do with the aftermath of a heart-rending breakup; "Kindred" features poems on fellow artists in poetry, music and painting (ranging from Georgia O'Keeffe to Snoopy, beagle-novelist); in "Apprentice," leaving is transformed into celebration, poem after poem about fierce loving of a world that we will have to leave. In these hard-hitting, highly personal poems, lamentation is a key note. Crushing loneliness weighs heavily on the spirit. But Sue Goyette has ways of sharing pain with a compensating wonderful flights of metaphor, language charged with verbal energy. "Isn't that our job," she asks, "to coax out the light in the story?" It's a job she takes to heart and performs brilliantly. The poems in Undone have the amplitude proper to "watching wide" - a discipline good for seeing shooting stars and, as this book illustrates, all other kinds of light in a darkness palpable but never enveloping, not when probed so truly and sung so beautifully. "If I had to do it again, I'd place a stethoscope on the heart of us
Sooner. I'd prescribe Neruda, not the despair but the slow blossom of 20 kisses. Goodbye, goodbye to the slippery duvet of this bed. The cold floor
of awake and how hope can have insomnia, spend the whole night wishing. Heartbreak is a geological occurrence." from "A Version of Courage"

Genres: Poetry, Canada

156 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2004

About the author

Sue Goyette is a Canadian poet and novelist. Born in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Goyette grew up in Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville, on Montreal's south shore.

Her first poetry book The True Names of Birds (1998) was nominated for the 1999 Governor General's Award, the Pat Lowther Award and the Gerald Lampert Award. Goyette's first novel, Lures: A Novel (2002), was nominated for the 2003 Thomas Head Raddall Award. She has also written another poetry collection, Undone (2004), and won the 2008 CBC Literary Award in poetry for the poem "Outskirts". The poetry collection of the same name, Outskirts won the Atlantic Poetry Prize in 2012. Goyette's fourth poetry collection, Ocean, was published in 2013 by Gaspereau Press.

Goyette has been a member of the faculty of The Maritime Writers' Workshop, The Banff Wired Studio, and The Sage Hill Writing Experience.

She presently lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and teaches at Dalhousie University.

Reviews

[Chris]

Wide ranging collection that covers many themes: love (of all kinds) lost, ecological sorrow, quotidian family moments, etc. my favourite poem is about the latter, called “Lawn” and highly relatable as the father of a teen reluctant to do the same chores I myself hate doing. Unmentioned is feeling like my father when I yell. A lot of these ideas (beautifully evoked) felt in my anachronistic reading like prequel to Sue’s later masterpieces.

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

Favourite poem: "Second Attempt"