Parables and Rain

Description

101 pages
$10.95
ISBN 0-921254-59-8
DDC C811'.54

Publisher

Year

1993

Contributor

Reviewed by Wayne Ray

Wayne Ray is president of the Canadian Poetry Association and author of
Giants of the North.

Review

Ian McCulloch is a poet of great evocative powers, whether bringing to
life an old woman’s apartment in “The Exile” (“the apartment is
small / and dark behind her / cluttered with things / that simply
adhered / over the long dry living / of these residential years”) or
the human proboscis in “Face Value” (“his nose extended / by some
malignancy / into a grotesque mushroom, / a fleshy ball connected / by a
thin stem / to his true nose”).

The poet masterfully broadens his scope and displays his talent for
scene depiction in “Scarifying Love” (“sometimes on her break / he
asked for a dance / pulling at the front / of his hat and digging / a
quarter out of his pocket / working it in his fingertips / he’d say he
had saved / it all week and / play the same song / as violins as sweet /
as a harvest breeze”).

These poems are not spontaneous poems, composed out of the whim of a
memory or present image; they are rather poems dragged into focus and
moulded to create an exact replica of the images McCulloch sees and
wishes to convey to the reader.

Citation

McCulloch, Ian., “Parables and Rain,” Canadian Book Review Annual Online, accessed October 14, 2024, https://cbra.library.utoronto.ca/items/show/13362.