The Way to Come Home

Shannon Hengen is an assistant professor of English at Laurentian
University and the author of Margaret Atwood’s Power: Mirrors,
Reflections and Images in Select Fiction and Poetry.

The four sections of this volume move gradually closer to the poet’s
home. The first section is set in South Africa, the second in Costa
Rica, the third (dedicated to the late Bronwen Wallace) in Ontario; the
final section is entitled “Home: A Calendar.”

Emphasizing the poet’s perceptions as a mother and friend, the poems
could be described as domestic in theme and familiar in imagery. This is
not to say that the themes and imagery are tired; on the contrary,
Smart’s ability to invest the ordinary with a compelling beauty is an
obvious strength. The third section, “The Sound of the Birds,” for
example, links bird calls with moments in the painful dying of Smart’s
poet-friend Bronwen Wallace. The last poem in this section ends with a
question—“whip-poor-will / where is your voice now?”—and a
lament for “the dark heart of a night without song.” Poems in the
first two sections often take the form of prose, and their content
points toward political statement, while the imagery remains natural
throughout all sections.

What is most remarkable about this volume is the attention given to
mothering. A confident, capable voice expressing exhilaration in
childbirth and breast-feeding seems as appropriate as it is rare, not
just in contemporary Canadian poetry, but in any poetry.

Smart’s fourth book of poems succeeds fully in its attempt to ally
human feeling, whether in southern Ontario or Spanish America, with the
life and process of the natural world. One hopes she will continue to
widen her circle of perception, perhaps bringing her keen eye and ear,
and her intelligence, to more timely issues.