harvest

For rob mclennan, poetry is a way of seeing, and what is seen in harvest: a book of signifiers is always a landscape as it inhabits the poet and his various personae. In the absence of capital letters, with only minimalist punctuation, and with a denial of the possessive case, (all formal signifiers of precedence and ownership), these poems do not appropriate the landscapes of their gaze, but rather liberate them.

What is harvested here are the signifiers for journeys: tickets, postcards, letters—recording unseemly haste, enforced idleness, losing one’s way, and sometimes finding it again. All coloured in the deceptive hues of a populist and egalitarian style, these poems are allowed to signify their own powerful and at times devastating ambiguities, from “a magic more elusive than any spell she whispered” to “the salt waste left by the flood, where no seed grows.”

the present is a small thing & moves very fast

in the same river, which as they say,

moves. it takes

& takes & takes. a polaroid

too long

to develop.

AUTHOR

Rob McLennan

rob mclennan is a poet, essayist, editor, reviewer, and blogger based in Ottawa. He has been published by many of Canada’s most prestigious publishers and he runs above/ground press, periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics. He is also the editor of my (small press) writing day, and an editor/managing editor of many gendered mothers. His writing is grounded using language in fresh ways to discover, clarify, and understand the world and his surroundings. He does “not wish to remain still.” mclennan is the author of more than thirty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, as well as over one hundred chapbooks of poetry and fiction. He has been twice long-listed for the CBC Poetry Prize, and was awarded Council for the Arts in Ottawa Mid-Career Award and the John Newlove Poetry Award.