The River and the Lake

Marilyn Orr teaches English at Laurentian University.

Graphic artist and designer Joanne Page invites readers into her world
with a combination of words and delicately etched sketches that
celebrate Ontario’s natural and small-town life.

Not surprisingly, the poems work best when they depict a scene in
precise, modulated, visual detail; tiny bubbles under black ice, for
example, are “gems on a jeweller’s cloth, / fronds held in the dark
/ until thaw.” Other strong moments come in subtle, sure analogies
between natural and human worlds: “the hardwood bush / is frugal in
spring, / as a country woman will take care / how much she says / until
she knows you better.” The book’s first section, “The River,” is
peopled by ordinary, intriguing characters like “Miss Annie Cook of
Centre Street,” whose picture makes us, along with the narrator, wish
to hear her voice. Page is skilled at conveying the mystery of the
mundane.

“Changing of the Guard” is representative of several poems that
record a resignation to the “ephemeral solutions and poor odds”
introduced by “Progress” (the title of another poem). The people in
Page’s town are like the wrens “caught out of season,” whose
flight is “all / the more luminous” for being “perilous.” Like
memory, the poet’s light touch aims to capture a fleeting world that
is “visible and absent / at the same moment”; like that world, these
poems reward careful attention.