Robinson’s Crossing

My great-
grandmother slept
in a boxcar on the night
before she made the crossing. The steel
ended in Sangudo then, there was
no trestle on the Pembina, no siding
on the other side. They crossed
by ferry, and went on by cart through bush,
the same eight miles. Another
family legend has it that she stood there
in the open doorway of the shack
and said, “You told me, Ernest,
it had windows and a floor.” – from “Robinson’s Crossing”

The poems in this book arise from Robinson’s Crossing – the place where the railway ends and European settlers arriving in northern Alberta had to cross the Pembina River and advance by wagon or on foot. How have we crossed into this country, with what violence and what blind love? Robinson’s Crossing enacts the pause at the frontier, where we reflect on the realities of colonial experience, but also on the nature of living here- on historical dwelling itself. In long meditative narratives and shorter probing lyrics, Jan Zwicky shows us-as she has in her celebrated Lyric Philosophy and the Governor General’s award-winning Songs for Relinquishing the Earth – how music means and meaning is musical.

AUTHOR

Jan Zwicky

Jan Zwicky is the author of some twenty books of poetry and prose, including Songs for Relinquishing the Earth, The Long Walk, and Wisdom & Metaphor. She grew up on the prairies, was educated at the Universities of Calgary and Toronto, and currently lives on the west coast of Canada. Her many honours include the Governor General’s Award and the Dorothy Livesay Prize.

Robert V. Moody is not only a celebrated photographer but an acclaimed mathematician, noted in particular for his work on the complexities of symmetry. Born in England but raised in Canada, he now divides his time between Pasadena, California, and Victoria, BC. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Reviews

” … A kind of delicate recovery operation, vividly evoking the past but also puzzling out its impact on the present … there’s a subtle interplay between troubled poems that are about a loss of bearings, and sunny ones about feeling full of purpose and direction … the end of the rail line at Robinson’s Crossing is a beginning point for some challenging meditations on history, constancy, and change.”–Barbara Carey, The Toronto Star

“This is a tremendously rewarding book … what makes Robinson’s Crossing, so successful is the degree to which it grounds its philosophical exploration in the intimate details of the body, of concrete, lived experience.”–Adam Dickinson, The Malahat Review

“These poems are finely tuned to the intricacies of space and language … [they] combine personal history and a complex understanding of the colonial experience.”–Gillian Jerome, Canadian Literature

“The emotionally rich Robinson’s Crossing carries a haunting melody that remains with the reader long after the book is put down.”–Paul Tyler, Arc Poetry Magazine