That Singing You Hear at the Edges

Melanie Marttila is a Sudbury-based freelance writer and writing
consultant.

“And that singing you hear at the edges? / My mother. Her sister,
Grace” coming home from a dance. This image is a stitch in the rich
tapestry of memories that Halifax’s award-winning poet laureate, Sue
MacLeod, weaves into her second collection. Her mother, motherhood, her
Maritime home, and the great mother—the ocean—are among the sources
the poet draws upon.

Women and women’s work are also featured in MacLeod’s work. In
“Thirteen ways of Looking at a clothesline,” a poem written in the
style of Wallace Stevens’s “Thirteen ways of looking at a
Blackbird,” laundry becomes a metaphor for memory, poetry, even life.

There is a wonderful wit here, too. In “This is a poem where words
are the unpaid workers,” one article steps forth at a gathering to
announce “My name is The, and I’m a co-dependant.” “Newsworld
Tonight,” written after Elizabeth Bishop’s “12 O’Clock News,”
details the writer’s desk and tools as elements of a landscape in a
“remote and desolate country.”

There is also pathos. In “Didn’t they warn her away from the
cliff?” the poet wonders “When the clods of earth begin / to loosen,
does she turn & grab at / the world?” This poem about the miraculous
survival of Julia, who fell from the cliff, speaks of the courage of
crying and the kindness of taking down mirrors.

That Singing You Hear at the Edges is a recommended addition to any
library that houses Canadian poetry.