Sky: A Poem in Four Pieces

Jean Free, a library consultant, was an elementary-school teacher and
librarian in Whitby, Ontario.

Sky is an imaginative, convincing poem in four parts on the elements of
air, water, earth, and fire, filled with bitterness, love, and violence.
In “Sky Narratives,” Scheier’s preliminary observations are of
waking feelings and past anxieties. “Ocean” speaks of birth, hope,
and future desires. “Earth” is “a catalogue of suspicions and
dreams,” as Scheier writes of physical love, the beauty of the earth,
of childhood, and recent tragedies. In her concluding poem, “Fire,”
she hopes to “let the old ways go, let them burn” in expectation of,
perhaps, a brighter future.

Scheier has written two previous books of poetry, The Larger Life
(1983) and Second Nature (1986) and she has contributed to a variety of
anthologies. She now teaches creative writing at York University. Her
style emanates energy; she writes controversially and with insight as
she speaks honestly to men, and especially women, of basic emotions and
problems of modern society.