Poems Twice Told: Containing the Boatman and Welcoming Disaster

by Jay Macpherson

This volume brings together two collections - one well known but unavailable for some time, the other little known - by a distinguished Canadian poet. The Boatman, first published in 1957, was one of the outstanding poetry collections of the 1950s and the winner of a Governor General's Award. It is an intricate sequence of short epigrammatic poems - in which there are echoes of ballads, carols, nursery rhymes, and hymns - that bear a whole cosmos of the poet's invention, constructed from Biblical and classical allusions. Welcoming Disaster was privately published in 1974 and will now reach the wider audience it deserves. Reviewing it in Poetry (January 1976), David Bromwich referred to Jay Macpherson's 'grandness' and 'verve', and 'She will put readers in mind of Graves and Wordsworth, of Auden and Dickinson and Stevie Smith, of every poet who ever wrote truly about innocence and its unlucky master, love.'

Genres: Poetry

100 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1982

About the author

Department of English, Victoria College, University of Toronto.

Reviews

[Mir]

Poets are such bad employers,
Muses ought to Organize:
Time off, sick pay, danger wages --
Come, ye wretched of the skies!

Poets, to reverse the story,
Muse-redeemed, return and live:
Solomon in all his glory
Could not pay for what you give.

PS.

Breathing too is a simple trick, and most of us learn it:
Still, to lose it is bad, though no-one regrets it long.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

ALL HAIL JAY MACPHERSON!! This book should be required reading for all Canadian English enthusiasts. Her poetry is so refreshing; I've never seen anything like it. Her personality shines through her poems, as if she is lying with you at a sleepover sharing her poetry with you. This book is the perfect introduction to Jay Macpherson, really all you need to become a stan. I could go on and on. There is really nothing like it, and I highly recommend.

[James Geary]

A spring restores these sands,
Pouring its rocky basin full.
Love, will you drink from my hands,
Or rather from my skull?
—Jay Macpherson, 'Love in Egypt'

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

Girl with Buck Teeth

I am a flower.
Full of Stones.
Passing is offered
Between my bones.