Dim Time and History on a Garrison Clock

Edward L. Edmonds is a professor of English at the University of Prince
Edward Island.

This book’s title derives from the subtitle of the last of its three
sections. These intensely personal poems have an aura of random
recollections, fireside fashion, of significant moments in life; they
variously express feelings of joy and gladness, pain and sadness, pathos
and pity. Hammer shows a keen eye for those often minute details that
can fully crystallize thought.

The poems are carefully titled. Some have a ballad-like simplicity of
utterance; pari passu, some assume a local knowledge—as, for example,
in “Down by Tufts Cove.” By contrast, “Standing Silver in the
Sun” is more universally philosophic and arguably the most profound
poem in the book. Hammer can evince a childlike delight in the shape and
sound of individual words; at the same time, recondite reference to
“larus argentatus” will delight the scholar.

The book has an attractive cover design and includes two fine
black-and-white illustrations, the latter of which will be familiar to
every Nova Scotian. Several of the poems have previously appeared in
journals, but this is Hammer’s first collection of poems to be
published. Let us hope it is not her last.