Knowledge in the Hands

Edward L. Edmonds is a professor of education at the University of
Prince Edward Island.

“Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time
future”—so wrote T.S. Eliot in “Burnt Norton.” It is a theme
Prince ponders, in relation to the personal self. The poems in this
collection are like dreams, giving us the images we need to understand,
and to participate in, the poet’s inner space. There are circularities
in the form of poems; images, words, and events recur, but in different
lights. Prince concentrates on a few carefully chosen related images,
such as hands, walls, beams, barn, egg, light, and the voice. Her lines
are simple, maintaining a balanced tension between austerity and
sensuousness. The scholar will delight in her delicate allusiveness, as
in “Second Invitation.” The volume’s closing quotation echoes St.
Paul’s own more famous affirmation of faith. The black-and-white cover
photograph by Dale McBride admirably captures the mood of the poems.
Prince’s longer poem, “A White Gift,” won the prestigious A.G.
Bailey Award in 1990.