While Breath Persist

Louise E. Allin, a poet and short-story writer, is also an English instructor at Cambrian College.

These poems reflect a classical education, rich experience, and love of
words. Eclectic in style and subject, they include epigrams, long poems,
narratives, prayers, and “constructivism,” the reweaving of a text.
For the last example, Turnbull transmutes thoughts and images from
Bunyan’s autobiography. Other more personal poems, like “Twenty
Words, Twenty Days,” express his experiences as a doctor, father, and
husband in a style similar to T.S. Eliot’s. He also has connections to
Canada through his medical career, and recalls in several poems his time
in Iroquois Falls. A dry wit emerges in “Now That April’s Here”
and “On the Somme,” an antiwar reflection, but a clear love and
respect for the common person ever informs his work.

For his imagery, Turnbull often pays homage to the skills of other
artisans, such as Spode and Turner. “The sun has disappeared leaving
part of itself adherent to / several fragments of vapour. ... The blue /
has taken the strain by splitting into radial fissures of / indigo. Tack
it together somehow with rivets of / carmine.” Here are the haze and
flames of the Fighting Temeraire captured in words. Then comes the
drumming alliteration of Skelton, or even Beowulf: “Brewer of beakers,
/ bitter’s your liquor! / Froth is a ferment for / fools.” The poet
retreats from this boisterous energy into the quiet prayers of “For
Us: An Invocation and a Processional,” a personal religious
experience. This collection will amuse and delight and instruct.