If More Winters, or This the Last

R. Gordon Moyles is professor emeritus of English at the University of
Alberta, co-author of Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities: British
Views of Canada, 1880–1914, author of The Salvation Army and the
Public, and the editor of “Improved by Cultiv

This is the 14th book in the Newfoundland Poetry Series, produced to
“preserve the literary talents” of Newfoundland and Labrador poets.
Like several other poets featured in the series, Alastair Macdonald is a
Newfoundlander by adoption, having been a professor of English at
Memorial University for more than 30 years. His poems, therefore, have a
distinct British ambience, but this in no way lessens their power or the
pleasure they evoke. For Macdonald is an exceptionally fine poet,
accessible to the average reader without being trite or condescending.
His rhythms are subtle, his tone slightly melancholic (perhaps
“wistful” is a better word), and there is a wry, slightly ironic,
undertone that permeates the whole and transforms the poems from mere
description to poignancy. One might in fact be forgiven, and not
considered maudlin, if one used the term “beautiful” for such poems
as “A Summer Time,” “The Sideboard,” and “Old Age.”

Macdonald, now an octogenarian, has probably given us his last
poems—ones that need no critical examination, just admiration: “Our
struggle with the here, / the now, has been long, / the now felt then to
be always. / Today is not wandering but / an ebb, and combing in / of
what remains upon the shore / for others to dispose, enjoy; /
withdrawing and narrowing towards / the last narrowness of all.”