What do you think?
Rate this book
footlights
Inside the phobic and the crushing we trudge through the wreckage, the slippage, and the comic, in our search for joy. The beauty in these poems is an amalgam, like a gathering storm, of the meteorological and political, the mundane and the distressing.
There's a Zen story where a student asks a master to summarize his teaching in one word. The master says, "Attention.' The student, not satisfied, asks for two words. "Attention. Attention," the master replies. In footlights, Pearl Pirie gives careful attention to the everyday details and daily strange wonders yielding poems rich in observation and nuance asking; What is it to live in the world and to have a life? What is it to pay attention to one's own attentiveness? Attend to these poems as they attend to you. They delight.
- Gary Barwin, author of For It Is a Pleasure and a Surprise to Breathe
Sensuous and deeply philosophical, the expansive poems in footlights put forth vital questions that push not only against but brilliantly into, the very essence of self as a combining form in these swiftly changing times.
- Brenda Schmidt, former Sask Poet Laureate, author of Culverts Beneath the Narrow Road
There's a Zen story where a student asks a master to summarize his teaching in one word. The master says, "Attention.' The student, not satisfied, asks for two words. "Attention. Attention," the master replies. In footlights, Pearl Pirie gives careful attention to the everyday details and daily strange wonders yielding poems rich in observation and nuance asking; What is it to live in the world and to have a life? What is it to pay attention to one's own attentiveness? Attend to these poems as they attend to you. They delight.
- Gary Barwin, author of For It Is a Pleasure and a Surprise to Breathe
Sensuous and deeply philosophical, the expansive poems in footlights put forth vital questions that push not only against but brilliantly into, the very essence of self as a combining form in these swiftly changing times.
- Brenda Schmidt, former Sask Poet Laureate, author of Culverts Beneath the Narrow Road
- GenresPoetry
76 pages, Paperback
Published October 12, 2020
7 people want to read
About the author
Pearl Pirie
16 books28 followersFourth Collection footlights (Radiant Press)
My third collection, the pet radish, shrunken (book*hug, 2015) won the Lampman Award.
author site:
www.pearlpirie.com
I'm most active on twitter as pesbo.
See also patreon.com/pearlpiriepoet
and instagram.com/PearlPiriePoet
on vimeo: https://vimeo.com/29603462
a 2012 reading from Thirsts, been shed bore and Mammals of Hoarfrost at Poets Live in Paris. Fellow readers with Peter Hughes and Bonny Finberg.
My third collection, the pet radish, shrunken (book*hug, 2015) won the Lampman Award.
author site:
www.pearlpirie.com
I'm most active on twitter as pesbo.
See also patreon.com/pearlpiriepoet
and instagram.com/PearlPiriePoet
on vimeo: https://vimeo.com/29603462
a 2012 reading from Thirsts, been shed bore and Mammals of Hoarfrost at Poets Live in Paris. Fellow readers with Peter Hughes and Bonny Finberg.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 16, 2020
footlights is a collection that combines ferocious care and delicatesse, wonder and keen observation, with minimalism, brilliant figurative language, humour and word play. in this book, there is strength, compassion, tenderness and vulnerability. Pearl doesn’t flinch away from illness, discomfort, anger, ageing, blood, or the struggles of the body.
November 15, 2020
In these times of isolation and uncertainty, especially through the shutdowns that occurred earlier this year, room has been given for contemplation upon things that exist and happen in our own backyards. So many of us have been given an opportunity to turn our gaze within, to familiarize ourselves with the things that had long awaited for our attentions.
Through the thick of this global pandemic, poet Pearl Pirie brings a collection of introspections and meditations that she has called “footlights”. The source of the title comes from another title in the book- ‘the saplings are yellow as footlights in the forest’. Through this poem and others, she is able to capture moments of light, when something turns full frontal to the sun and seems to illuminated brighter than its surroundings, as she has done with the opening lines of ‘honey locusts shed gold at whippet dawn’:
“along the cracked sidewalks
dog, bright as a mote
translucent as a glass fish.”
Pearl lives in the wilds of Quebec’s Gatineau Hills, close to nature, immersed in its quiet, peace and microcosmic dramatic plays. In them, she sees the synchronicity between the natural and the human, the artificial. She sees their metaphysicality, their metaphors. Everything literary runs on metaphors, acting as a lubricant for us to move through our lives. Pearl has a sort of sixth sense when it comes to seeing these devices, as if she sees a dimension few people can see. A penny for her thoughts indeed would be an investment with high returns.
As an empath, she carefully considers everything, observing from afar, yet her affection never diminishes with the distance. Her observations of nature are subtle, as she tries to not be obtrusive, in ‘what is set in motion’
“aware of my indelicate
predator eyes,
through its reflection,
I watch the loon.”
Or in ‘ant by lamplight’
“Pausing, head tilted
we, despite ourselves,
cheer. she’s started down:”
She writes with a powerful candid sensuality, as in ‘the ligaments hop over one another’
“here, put your thumbs
(each deserve an Order of Canada)
into my waiting shoulders,”
Or she uses powerful corporeal metaphorical imagery as you may find in ‘in the park’s verges’
“Will our ribs find they can intermesh like fingers
In a bit of scrub and cedar verge?”
And again in ‘house with you’, we see a lover as furniture, an accessory for your decor where we seek the
comfort of human contact, sinking into the contours of your lover’s body.
“you would make a wonderful wingchair
my back to your stomach, your jaw for my temple.”
“footlights” covers so much ground, touches so many different things, oscillating from a lighthearted play on words such as ‘a flannelette’s flannel’ or the life/death drama of watching a cooper’s hawk attack a pigeon while she orders pho in ‘waiting for menus’.
Even her titles tell stories solely on their own, such as ‘pollinators think the bouquet is for them’ or ‘old habits are hard as a boiled egg to beat’. Still, all of them comment on the human condition through so many transparent layers, like looking into a lenticular picture, where what you see depends on the angle at which you view.
In the end, “footlights” is luminous with the energy of Pearl’s bright and brilliant mind. She illuminates so many different questions and reflects back the answers through beautiful imagery and lush metaphors. In what seems to be dark times, she lights us a pathway with which we can traverse safely and confidently through the theatre of life, grateful for her vivid poetic projections and music.
Through the thick of this global pandemic, poet Pearl Pirie brings a collection of introspections and meditations that she has called “footlights”. The source of the title comes from another title in the book- ‘the saplings are yellow as footlights in the forest’. Through this poem and others, she is able to capture moments of light, when something turns full frontal to the sun and seems to illuminated brighter than its surroundings, as she has done with the opening lines of ‘honey locusts shed gold at whippet dawn’:
“along the cracked sidewalks
dog, bright as a mote
translucent as a glass fish.”
Pearl lives in the wilds of Quebec’s Gatineau Hills, close to nature, immersed in its quiet, peace and microcosmic dramatic plays. In them, she sees the synchronicity between the natural and the human, the artificial. She sees their metaphysicality, their metaphors. Everything literary runs on metaphors, acting as a lubricant for us to move through our lives. Pearl has a sort of sixth sense when it comes to seeing these devices, as if she sees a dimension few people can see. A penny for her thoughts indeed would be an investment with high returns.
As an empath, she carefully considers everything, observing from afar, yet her affection never diminishes with the distance. Her observations of nature are subtle, as she tries to not be obtrusive, in ‘what is set in motion’
“aware of my indelicate
predator eyes,
through its reflection,
I watch the loon.”
Or in ‘ant by lamplight’
“Pausing, head tilted
we, despite ourselves,
cheer. she’s started down:”
She writes with a powerful candid sensuality, as in ‘the ligaments hop over one another’
“here, put your thumbs
(each deserve an Order of Canada)
into my waiting shoulders,”
Or she uses powerful corporeal metaphorical imagery as you may find in ‘in the park’s verges’
“Will our ribs find they can intermesh like fingers
In a bit of scrub and cedar verge?”
And again in ‘house with you’, we see a lover as furniture, an accessory for your decor where we seek the
comfort of human contact, sinking into the contours of your lover’s body.
“you would make a wonderful wingchair
my back to your stomach, your jaw for my temple.”
“footlights” covers so much ground, touches so many different things, oscillating from a lighthearted play on words such as ‘a flannelette’s flannel’ or the life/death drama of watching a cooper’s hawk attack a pigeon while she orders pho in ‘waiting for menus’.
Even her titles tell stories solely on their own, such as ‘pollinators think the bouquet is for them’ or ‘old habits are hard as a boiled egg to beat’. Still, all of them comment on the human condition through so many transparent layers, like looking into a lenticular picture, where what you see depends on the angle at which you view.
In the end, “footlights” is luminous with the energy of Pearl’s bright and brilliant mind. She illuminates so many different questions and reflects back the answers through beautiful imagery and lush metaphors. In what seems to be dark times, she lights us a pathway with which we can traverse safely and confidently through the theatre of life, grateful for her vivid poetic projections and music.
February 8, 2023
Of Pearl Pirie’s quirky Footlights, Gary Barwin writes, “What is it to pay attention to one's own attentiveness? Attend to these poems as they attend to you.” These astutely observed poems attend to the marvel of the daily, with a concomitant slippage of play, in language that engages the reader to read aloud as if in the act of writing:
“a chalet, and a chal
a shan’t and a pamphlet’s own pamph,
slight burn, and a sobri’s own coal sobriquet.”
A thoughtful, sensuous approach to experience, as in “Dust”:
“it’s impossible not to own
something, a worry stone
cloistered in sweat, the tip
of your nose even if it looks
like mother’s, what you hold
with your eyes, the roll of hills…”
“a chalet, and a chal
a shan’t and a pamphlet’s own pamph,
slight burn, and a sobri’s own coal sobriquet.”
A thoughtful, sensuous approach to experience, as in “Dust”:
“it’s impossible not to own
something, a worry stone
cloistered in sweat, the tip
of your nose even if it looks
like mother’s, what you hold
with your eyes, the roll of hills…”
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews