Swimming in the Afternoon

M. Morgan Holmes teaches English at McGill University.

Simonides’ dictum that poetry is a speaking picture underwrites the
poetry of Peter Stevens. This collection of previously published work
(and one new poem) declares the author’s fascination with concrete
images free from overdetermined meanings of moralization.
Simultaneously, however, as Stevens leaves the reader to interpret the
offered visions, the poet’s own impressions of the beauty and the
horror of the world are up front and direct.

In one poem, set at the lakeshore, we are told that “the idea of
water / washes into your mind,” a perfect description of the effect of
the author’s language in its seemingly inevitable and natural
engagement of the reader’s interest. This effect is largely due to the
fusion of everyday empirical data with surprising metaphorical
associations. Sunrise, in the middle of a battlefield somewhere in the
Far East, is described as “faintly needling at our eyes / pin-sharp as
mosquitoes,” while in another poem the shocking beauty of violence is
depicted in the almost incidental observation made of a dead man that
“The blood of roses trickles from his mouth / and soaks into the
parched bones of the path.” The strength of such lines rests in their
effortless combination of the mundane and the extraordinary, a virtue of
the best of contemporary poetry.

Published over a period of more than 20 years, the poems in Swimming in
the Afternoon sometimes sound rather dated. “Saskatchewan,” for
instance, with its Canadiana evocation of the fearfulness of the
landscape, resonates less deeply than the lonely pathos of “The Saint
of Discard,” whose collection of “the jetsam of the city’s
tides” incisively captures modern anomie and waste. On the whole,
however, the collection is a valuable record of the work of a poet who
has consistently questioned whether individuals’ often desperate
search for “order” is not the source of the disorder they find.
Black Moss Press must also be commended for its tasteful production of
the book, whose thick, cream-coloured pages and peaceful cover art add
to the pleasure of swimming with Peter Stevens.