Why Couldn't You See Blue?

Beryl Baigent is a poet; her published collections include Absorbing the
Dark, Hiraeth: In Search of Celtic Origins, Triptych: Virgins, Victims,
Votives, and Mystic Animals.

Caroline Heath (1941–1989), the founder of Grain Magazine and of Fifth
House Publishers, was diagnosed with breast cancer in the late 1980s.
Her illness became her muse as she unexpectedly turned from criticism to
the writing of poetry, a pursuit that occupied the final two years of
her life. This collection of her poems is an intimate and personal
meditation on childhood memories, love, illness, and death. In addition
to editor Anne Szumigalski’s foreword, the book contains tributes
dedicated by Mark Abley, Lorna Crozier, Father Bob Ogle, and Elizabeth
Phillips, and a biographical piece compiled by the Heath family.

Written from the heart of a woman who is “one part maiden goddess /
one part maiden warrior,” these poems are not for the romantic or for
the unbeliever. The maiden goddess compares her cancer cells to the dead
fetus she miscarried; she meets death in the form of a “tall, smooth
black-man” encountered on a train. The warrior waits, like Christ,
during Holy Week 1988, for “the next blow of the hammer / driving
nails into [her] hands.” The maiden is afraid to reveal her anger,
which is present in the deep hurt of abandonment she experienced both as
a child and adult. The warrior battles loneliness in the midst of
success and attempts to give everything, even the pain, a number or a
weight.

Heath has confirmed her place in Canadian letters: first as a
critic-editor who gave some of today’s most accomplished writers their
first serious critical response, and now, with the release of this
volume, as a poet in her own right.