No Visual Scars

Peter Baltensperger is the editor and publisher of Moonstone Press and
the author of Arcana.

Angela Hryniuk’s second volume of poems reverberates with the powerful
emotions of love and pain, joy and grief, ecstasy and despair. The poems
are “fingers one by one placed carefully / around edges of memory”
(“second skin”) and read like urgent confessions, hurried rituals of
purification made in haste before it might be too late, so strong are
the memories and the underlying emotions. For although in “gluing back
what limbs have come unstuck there are no visual scars,” we are
“always trapped behind a door” and ultimately “it is the trying
that saves us moves us into new strength” (“no visual scars”).

Divided into three sections, the book explores the elations and the
regrets of remembered and lost love; the horrors of physical, emotional,
and sexual violence; and the pleasures and pains of pregnancy, birthing,
motherhood, adoption, and abortion. The poet moves skilfully from mind
to mind, from persona to persona, from character to character in her
explorations of the many aspects and ramifications of the feminine
experience, to weave a tapestry of universal emotions and reactions to
the world and to the universe at large. Shifting back and forth between
poetry and poetic prose, Hryniuk captures the essence of the wide
variety of experiences that constitute the basis of her book by probing
deeply into the psyches of her women.

Hryniuk’s command of language is commendable and compelling, her
expressiveness strong and crisp. The tight lines and the emotionally
charged hurriedness of the poems serve well to develop and embellish the
often painful topics the poet has chosen as her subject matter. This
collection firmly establishes her as an important and powerful voice in
Canadian poetry.