The Chopping Bee And Other Laurentian Stories

Author : Richard Outram
Publisher : The Porcupine's Quill
ISBN 13 : 9780889842984
Total Pages : 136 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (429 download)

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Download or read book South of North written by Richard Outram and published by The Porcupine's Quill. This book was released on 2007 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Outram has long been accused (there are those who will protest, wrongly accused) of being a `difficult' poet. An ascetic traditionalist perhaps, as opposed to a populist the likes of cigar-smoking Al Purdy or whiskey-ravaged Milton Acorn. Some, notably the formidable critic Peter Sanger, prefer the term `challenging' in describing Outram's poetry. Alberto Manguel has written that Richard Outram is `one of the finest poets in the English language'. But then there are those fervent, vocal dissidents who will insist that not only is the thicker of Outram's poetry `impenetrable', but also that Sanger's criticism is equally incomprehensible, if not more so. South of North presents a very different side of the polarizing Richard Outram. Consider ... `Outram's ``perfect burden'' is the necessity of human ignorance and confusion, the burden of the ``sad man'' in ``Autumn'' which, like the riddle-work of material lattice both intercepting and allowing the passage of light in The Promise of Light, is the only possible preliminary to an accurate and profound experience of love.' -- Peter Sanger, `Her kindled shadow, ' An Introduction to the Work of Richard Outram In South of North, by way of stark contrast, Outram's azure mariner compares the `waves of Whiffinspit' with the `waves of Pond Inlet' and finds the waters to be remarkably similar. As might be expected; nothing more complicated than that. South of North depicts a landscape that is distinctly rural -- a weathervane, dogwood in a marsh, and raucous crows; the whitened skeleton of a vole in a fallow field. Tantramar Marsh, the Saugeen River and the horses of Bonavista. A summer storm building over Cobourg; the hefty bulk of a snapping turtle surfacing, trailing a rank ooze.