Robinson's Crossing

Bert Almon is a professor of English at the University of Alberta. He is
the author of Calling Texas, Earth Prime, and Mind the Gap.

This is Zwicky’s first full-length poetry collection since her superb
1999 Governor-General’s Award winner, Songs for Relinquishing the
Earth. The new element here is the strong concern with family history.
Her readers may be surprised at the number of long poems (some of them
prose poetry) on such themes, a new development for a writer whose
hallmark is an austere and elegant lyricism. The title of the book comes
from the place where the railroad ended in Northern Alberta, the site
where settlers (like some of her ancestors) had to cross the Pembina
River in wagons or on foot. Zwicky has always been interested in
boundaries, and the “Crossing” is a seam in history and even
landscape. Her concern with music and philosophy persists; the volume is
not a break with her earlier work but an extension of it. Zwicky is one
of Canada’s most dedicated poets, and this collection will repay
frequent readings.