Gravity and Light

Boyd Holmes is an editor with Dundurn Press.

This is an anthology of work by three unknown young Canadian poets:
Margaret Blackwood, Anne M. Kelly, and Kerry Slavens. It has no
introduction, no explanation of its title, and no mention of an editor.
According to the book’s acknowledgements, some of these poems appeared
originally in Canadian Literature, Descant, The Fiddlehead, Malahat
Review, Matrix, and Prism International.

Backwood, Kelly, and Slavens are unknown for a reason: each writes
tin-ear poetry. All 83 poems are in free verse; this is not wrong
intrinsically, but here it has led to slackness and a tone so relaxed
that it forbids the reader any sense of active engagement: “But as I
wait for the signature in falsetto; / the screek of the pulleys at
suppertime / when the neighbourhood laundry is reeled in like a good
day’s catch, / I remember my childhood and the comfort of air-dried
flannelette.” Still, Gravity and Light does have many moments of
unintentionally hilarious compensation: “We will grow old, / but not
while the speed of romance / sends us / shivering through time, for life
/ is a blink of the eye, / but love is slower than molasses.”