The Strength of Materials
Publisher Wolsak & Wynn (2001)
ISBN 0919897762
The Strength of Materials suggests a world in which every elegy is an ode and every ode an elegy. These poems both praise and commemorate the material world in all its beauty and fleetingness; they speak of rejoicing through grief and grieving through joy, of loss and recovery, of bereavement and resilience. The Strength of Materials delineates the gifts this perishable world offers its unsuspecting human inhabitants.
Sample poem:
A Really Good Run (Elegy)
I finish my run and think
I’m so strong now, nothing could kill me:
not the dwarf star imploding in Alpha Centauri, not
the Toronto Humane Society van swerving to avoid a raccoon.
Not living beside Lake Ontario, not Devon cream or rare
roast beef, chlorinated, fluoridated water. Not booze,
drugs, sex, black ice on the sidewalk. Not seeing my aunt
go down my front steps, whispering, It hurts so much.
Or my strong father stalled by his hip after half a block, leaning against a telephone pole.