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And Yet: Poems
A former Poet Laureate of Canada and finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize returns with a wide-ranging new collection of poems.
CBC Best Canadian Poetry of 2020
In John Steffler's luminous collection, And Yet , dreams, memory and desire are forms of wilderness that burst into our daily lives, inspiring us to see ourselves and the world anew. Exuberant, powerful, even prescient, the poems confront the unknown and unexpected around and within us and call up our impulse to resist certainty and finality. The flimsiest shelter might seem best; a trail guide's house is revealed as a forest beyond names. What is outside might be most desired; a suit of clothes gazing into a mirror longs to become an iguana. In the title poem, a road-weary traveller comes in sight of the longed-for home--yet at the last minute turns away. Restless in their own language, the poems muster the impact of direct sensory experience and remind us what it means to live closer to the physical world. At times their attenuated forms acquire the anxious beauty of Giacometti sculptures. Our capacity for surprising change, these poems suggest, is both a cause for caution and a reason to hope that we can reinvent ourselves and transform our destructive technological culture.
CBC Best Canadian Poetry of 2020
In John Steffler's luminous collection, And Yet , dreams, memory and desire are forms of wilderness that burst into our daily lives, inspiring us to see ourselves and the world anew. Exuberant, powerful, even prescient, the poems confront the unknown and unexpected around and within us and call up our impulse to resist certainty and finality. The flimsiest shelter might seem best; a trail guide's house is revealed as a forest beyond names. What is outside might be most desired; a suit of clothes gazing into a mirror longs to become an iguana. In the title poem, a road-weary traveller comes in sight of the longed-for home--yet at the last minute turns away. Restless in their own language, the poems muster the impact of direct sensory experience and remind us what it means to live closer to the physical world. At times their attenuated forms acquire the anxious beauty of Giacometti sculptures. Our capacity for surprising change, these poems suggest, is both a cause for caution and a reason to hope that we can reinvent ourselves and transform our destructive technological culture.
- GenresPoetry
128 pages, Paperback
Published September 1, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 16, 2023
“A caress reaching out from
under the larynx—this was so well understood,
it had its own word, as one might say ‘a laugh,’
‘a shudder.’ We don’t know how the word
sounded, but there are many carvings of it”
“I wish
I lived in that birch-filtered light
with things as they are, not
thinking their names.”
#npm23 #nationalpoetrymonth
@canadianpoets #todayspoem
under the larynx—this was so well understood,
it had its own word, as one might say ‘a laugh,’
‘a shudder.’ We don’t know how the word
sounded, but there are many carvings of it”
“I wish
I lived in that birch-filtered light
with things as they are, not
thinking their names.”
#npm23 #nationalpoetrymonth
@canadianpoets #todayspoem
July 15, 2023
This work was full of stories of the wilderness within our daily lives, and utilized everything from descriptions of viburnum berries, to the moon, to a childhood home to highlight desire, memory, and dreams. This would be a wonderful read for sitting on a park bench or on a picnic blanket enjoying a gentle breeze.
April 11, 2021
Puzzled by much and enchanted by most everything in this dazzling new book of poems. Steffler is investigating nothing less than what it is to be human.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews