Stations of the Left Hand

Don Precosky teaches English at the College of New Caledonia and is the
co-editor of Four Realities: Poets of Northern B.C.

In Stations of the Left Hand Don Domanski is continually looking up—at
the sun, the moon, the stars, and even the occasional dragon. The
heavens, luminous with celestial bodies, rise above the poem, creating a
dual, contradictory effect, expanding and shrinking the human
experience: making us bigger because of our sense of belonging in the
cosmos, yet revealing our appalling minuteness in the context of the
universe.

The book is prefaced by this quotation from Hermes Epimetheus: “The
left hand leads us through matter, which is really nothing other than
pure spirit thickened like clotted blood, the blood that was spilt upon
time and space.” The physical as a kind of “clotting” of the
spiritual seems to be Domanski’s main preoccupation in this book. More
specifically, he seems dedicated to hunting down the trace that the
spirit leaves behind after it has “thickened” into body.

These poems attack the reader with a rush of sense impressions, like a
video on fast-forward or a ride on a rushing roller coaster. The pieces
are rich in metaphors and similes, which the reader must not pass over
too quickly lest she or he miss the subtlety of their nuances: “to the
left there’s a cow / standing like a public building / closed for a
holiday / on his right a huge maple tree / filled with handshakes / and
lost conversations” (“He Leans Homeward”).

On a few occasions there may be more sizzle than steak, but on the
whole Domanski has served up a banquet of metaphysical delights.