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Calling Home
Richard Sanger’s new collection contains voices reporting from a number of far-flung states, both emotional and geographic. The book’s true theme, though, is what one calls home, and the idea that home itself can be a calling. Framed by an unusual sequence of four encounters with a loved one who is both different and the same, Calling Home digs through family history and faraway winters with all the colloquial verve and formal skill that has made Sanger one of the most compelling—and enjoyable—of Canada’s new poets.
- GenresPoetry
88 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2002
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 27, 2022
Wrong. The sky was not always postcard blue
Nor did the locals pluck their guitars every night
Beneath the high-wrought balconies and crescent moon
As the shadows, the dark argumentative shadows,
Accumulated upstairs in our rooms.
No, we rose late and early, lived from day to day,
Ate fresh sardines in tiny, makeshift bars,
Tossed the tails in sawdust, gulped wine, made love,
And regretted much, as people do.
* * *
In the café, a face
Like a map creased by years
Recalling some far lost place,
Sprouts inadvertent tears -
I watch each fresh, fat drop
Run down that parchment skin,
Round and soft, a bumper crop
That might have been -
I watch, look down to sip
From the drink I've poured,
And there, like a tear, one lemon pip:
Round, wrinkled, hard.
* * *
November and nothing but a few mendicant pigeons
Picking their way across the frozen park,
The odd squirrel reconnoitering his backyard,
Trees exhibiting their withered limbs
Like invalids stretching fingers to the sky,
Pennies from heaven or the passing rich,
Their glorious leaves collecting in the ditch,
As the days, once so happening and so bright,
Begin to blue like bad photocopies.
And, here, flopped out on a park bench, drunk,
An Old World bundled of tobacco and wool rolls
Oh-so-slowly over and gives a grunt.
On his ragged lapel, there are two poppies -
Two scarlet poppies that might be bullet holes.
Nor did the locals pluck their guitars every night
Beneath the high-wrought balconies and crescent moon
As the shadows, the dark argumentative shadows,
Accumulated upstairs in our rooms.
No, we rose late and early, lived from day to day,
Ate fresh sardines in tiny, makeshift bars,
Tossed the tails in sawdust, gulped wine, made love,
And regretted much, as people do.
- Nota Bene, for Mark Migotti, pg. 26
* * *
In the café, a face
Like a map creased by years
Recalling some far lost place,
Sprouts inadvertent tears -
I watch each fresh, fat drop
Run down that parchment skin,
Round and soft, a bumper crop
That might have been -
I watch, look down to sip
From the drink I've poured,
And there, like a tear, one lemon pip:
Round, wrinkled, hard.
- In the Café, pg. 37
* * *
November and nothing but a few mendicant pigeons
Picking their way across the frozen park,
The odd squirrel reconnoitering his backyard,
Trees exhibiting their withered limbs
Like invalids stretching fingers to the sky,
Pennies from heaven or the passing rich,
Their glorious leaves collecting in the ditch,
As the days, once so happening and so bright,
Begin to blue like bad photocopies.
And, here, flopped out on a park bench, drunk,
An Old World bundled of tobacco and wool rolls
Oh-so-slowly over and gives a grunt.
On his ragged lapel, there are two poppies -
Two scarlet poppies that might be bullet holes.
- Sleeper, after Rimbaud's "Dormeur du val", pg. 53
Displaying 1 of 1 review