The Way It Was - Poems by Don Gutteridge

by Don Gutteridge

Don Gutteridge's poems, it seems to me, are masterfully crafted; the deftness of diction, the preciseness of the images, and the overall metaphorical structure vivify an emotional and spiritual reality which is not only the core of our history but is at the centre of our lives. Gutteridge, seeking to understand how the spirit of the past impinges on the present, merges past and present so that, as Joseph Conrad put it, he arouses "that latent feeling of fellowship with all creation . . . the dead to living, the living to the unborn." Literary critics will have much to say about Gutteridge's uniquely Canadian vision. I am content that his poetry is accessible, unobtrusive, delights the ear, stirs the heart and even enters into the soul. It is the art that mirrors inner life. R. G. Moyles, The University of Alberta In The Journal of Canadian Poetry.

88 pages, Paperback

First published September 4, 2014

About the author

Don Gutteridge was born in Sarnia and raised in the nearby village of Point Edward. He taught High School English for seven years, later becoming a Professor in the Faculty of Education at the Western University, where he is now Professor Emeritus. He is the author of twenty-two novels. including the twelve-volume Marc Edwards mystery series. Don is also an accomplished poet and has published twenty-three books of poetry, one of which, Coppermine, was a finalist for the 1973 Governor-General's Award. In 1970 he won the UWO President's medal for the best periodical poem of that year. To listen to interviews with the author, go to: http://thereandthen.podbean.com. Don currently lives in London, Ontario.

Reviews

[jackmagnus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reviewed by Jack Magnus for Readers' Favorite

The Way It Was is a collection of poems written by Don Gutteridge. This collection is divided into three parts: Back Then, Present Tense and Miscellany. The first part is a celebration of his early years as a boy growing up in Point Edward, Ontario, a small town bordered by Lake Huron and the St. Clair River. These poems are idyllic in nature, timeless snapshots of the past when all seemed possible and summers were endless vistas of possibility. Gutteridge’s grandfather is lovingly remembered in Letters: For my Grandfather: 1892-1955. Elsewhere in the collection, we see the poet as a child “Curled on Grandpa’s lap,/while he spins the tale/on the Three Bears, I/succumb to the thrall/of the story, spun a dozen/times or more, drawn/to the ancient tug/of its three-pronged plot,/riding tall on the velvet/voice I adore,/and we both guffaw/at the inept antics of Goldilocks..”. And in Touch, the young boy ‘hop-steps’ to keep up with his grandfather’s military gait as he plies him with questions about the war. While Gutteridge’s poems often focus on his father’s preternatural skill on the ice and gift for fishing, it is his grandfather who is that all-important, supportive and gentle presence in his life. In Grinning, he recounts how his grandfather built a snow slide one snowy winter: “and sailing down we went/as ardent as Argonauts,/our scarves spinning out/behind us and our eyes/as wide and thrilled as a/hummingbird’s flutter,/while high on the hill, his own eyes alight,/my Grandpa -- grinning.” This marvelous piece had me visualizing the man as godlike, benevolent, a force of nature that was larger than life as he stands high overhead, sharing in their jubilation and beaming with delight at those children sailing down the slope.

While I love the poems celebrating those people from his past, in this volume, I was most taken by the Canatara poems. In Dunes at Canatara, Gutteridge contrasts the eons of time taken to sculpt the dunes surrounding the lake with the easy carelessness of the young boy and his friends who take an afternoon romp and “put our imprimatur upon/the shimmering concavities,/our bodies pressing/their wry signatures deep/deep into the sun-stunned sand,/feeling the heat of a hundred/centuries oozing through.” In this poem, Gutteridge weaves sound and sense as he describes the sculpted dunes being painstakingly built up of wave-washed sand grains. The first sentence is a feast for the eye, mind and tongue as the reader slowly takes in the splendor and substance through the action of alliteration, sound and image. In The Right, another Canatara poem, Gutteridge posits the dunes as “pyramids along the/wind-whispered shore-/line..while the dunes looked on/with their thousand-year smile.” The contrast of the young boys filled with enthusiasm, imagination and the heady, if fleeting, possibilities of their dreams is beautifully offset by that “thousand-year smile.” In Clarity, he remembers the hours spent at Canatara, playing in the woods and then the “dash to the dunes,/sifted from the sands of a/thousand forgotten seas.” The boys luxuriate in the “foetal warmth” then plunge into the “blue clarity of the lustrous/Lake, certain that days/like these would have no end.”

In Part Two, Gutteridge continues to focus on the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren in his poem, Fancies: For Katie and Rebecca, where he delights in the unrestrained dancing of his grandchildren to a “tune heard only/in the head” and watches as “they beam me a smile,/untroubled by anything/as guileless as stage-fright,/knowing they have made me/complicit in their furious fancies.” And, again, there is the sense of time and the unbroken ties of family in Flowering: “the love they harbour/for me and mine glows/like gladioli brightening/under the moon’s breath:/may we waltz hand-in-glove/towards Time and Eternity.” In Dusk, he gazes over Lake Huron as the sun is setting and recalls those early days. In Here Am I, he’s “instantly grounded” by the twin photographs of his grandfathers “smiling out at me/with English or Irish eyes...and somehow I know/they’re watching with a wink and shrug/to see themselves/reintroduced to the world.”

In Posterity, Gutteridge affirms: “My death will not consume me,/there is little room/for grief or grievance,for I will live in the lively/eyes of my grandchildren/in those moments when they are/startled by a memory too/deep to be unremembered/or prize on a particular day/the embers of my voice in the/lilt and timbre of a poem/I wrote just for me/and posterity.” And that seems to be the gist of this remarkable and moving collection of poetry, the essence of timelessness and immortality, seen in the patient dunes building themselves over eons, the wide-open horizons and exuberance of youth -- and the special bonds that form living chains through generations. The Way It Was is a collection to be savored slowly and lovingly, with frequent stops to appreciate the way the words, sounds and sense merge and mingle to become more than they ever could be through the magic that is poetry. Let the sound pairs dance on your tongue as you read aloud or just savor their possibilities in your mind; each poem is lovingly burnished and primed, ready and waiting for the reader. The Way It Was is most highly recommended.

[Don Gutteridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kane Faucher, The Western News

There is no doubt the poems collected in this svelte volume have been memorially 'lived in'; they must negotiate a world with -- and without-- words. Gutteridge's poetic offerings do not rely on complex conceptual acrobatics, but are seemingly designed as accessible snapshots of life, a snippet of sentiment, the suddenly reanimated blush of a faded history. Gutter takes as much pains in where to stagger these free-verse poems as he does in staggering the memories they contain.
Each tells a story in the form of a vignette, its context established quickly like the flash of a photographer's bulb. The resolve their 'story' only relatively, a discrete interval as each is a textual image in an album composed of pictures broken up by silences and spaces where words retreat. Accented with very memorable imagery, such as the widow Mrs. Bray being "bee-deep" in the flowers, or the tasteful alliterations of "glittering gladioli" and "dappling daze," all serve to call us home to our humble archive of memories when the slap of a strap, an engine drone, the spectacular light of a crepuscular evening and the passage of life to a wordless world are personally profound events.
Both pleasant and haunting, we are treated to a world of velvet voices and muttering mortars in a memorial transfer from past to present, from present to beyond.

Isabel Huggan

I've been able to have a lovely long sit-and-peruse of the poems. I have very much enjoyed the familiar voice, the embracing of place and beloved family -- and the place of family in our lives. Really life-affirming in the best sense.


Eugene Burdenuk:

I "see precisely what you mean" in this latest book of poems. I enjoyed and rather devoured the whole book. What a delight! The book captures growing up, grandparents, parents and grandchildren. I intend to go back to The Way It Was to savour the feelings that were aroused in me again and again.

John Clark:

I just finished Don Gutteridge's The Way It Was. I think this is among his best work. It's a very poignant and personal realization of his long musing about time, memory and commemoration, in clear and simple verse. I suspect there is more to come.