Colours for Scriabin: New and Selected Poems

Elizabeth St. Jacques is a writer and poet living in Sault Ste. Marie,
Ontario.

Alexander Scriabin (1871-1915), a brilliant Russian composer who
initiated “a new chord of superimposed fourths, by bending key
colours,” serves as inspiration for the title of Gourlay’s fifth
book. Among this vivid collection of 93 poems is “Poems, with Colour,
for Scriabin,” a long biographical poem of 25 parts that deserves to
be read in full. Scriabin would surely smile to read this beautifully
executed tribute.

This book, divided into three sections containing 47 new poems and 46
reprints from two earlier collections, testifies to the author’s
poetic versatility as she presents the sonnet, villanelle, haiku, tanka,
couplet, and rhymed and free verse. More importantly, she writes them
well.

Like Scriabin’s music, Gourlay’s poems paint pictures that flash
with such colour, sound, and texture that one is left feeling like a
marshmallow, a whirligig, or a rumbling volcano. Every step of the way,
emotions are wound like a pretzel, but the exercise is valuable as one
weighs the reality of life and death and how they fit together on the
score of existence.

The author’s sensitivity to the ecological system and nature are
especially touching. In “Green Backed Hummer,” for example, the
beautiful hummingbird that had entertained her all summer long is dead:
“it is strange to sit here / stroking / her still breast feathers /
with my slow / moving finger.”

Gourlay’s world is real and sharply defined by shape and placement:
“in the long run / existence is ordinary / . . . except in the pages
of / biography / history / fiction” (from “Poems For My Mother,
XVI”). And yet the miracle of a newborn child leaves “the world
turn[ing] greenly on its solar rope” (from “Matthew Means Gift From
God”), while the deaths of loved ones remind her that “the rule is /
one can only give / to the living” (“Rule”).

Throughout this collection, Gourlay’s wit sparkles, while her vision
is unique and fresh: a crossword puzzle is used to define the flower of
love for a friend: “how can one cram friendship into a five letter
stem?” she asks (from “For Anne, December 1989”).

Tender, intense, playful, and irreverent, the music that flows through
Gourlay’s poems is sure to impress even the tone-deaf. As for colours?
They are all here . . . like a triple rainbow. Scriabin would be
pleased.