Undercover

Sheila Martindale is poetry editor of Canadian Author and Bookman and
the author of No Greater Love.

Reading on the book’s cover that Wendy Morton is WestJet’s “Poet
of the Skies,” and that she is also a private investigator (great
trench coat and fedora photo!) immediately piqued my interest in these
poems. And they do not disappoint. The topics are wide-ranging, from the
natural world to advice for living, and from whimsy (a skull falling
from the sky) to moving tributes for friends who have died.

The poems are well-crafted, with no extra verbiage, and the language is
elegant and yet cogent. They appeal on the cerebral level, and are rich
with undercurrents of emotion. They speak to the reader’s intelligence
without pretension or obscurity. They are engaging, making you want to
know more and yet satisfying on several levels. They are the kind of
poems you will return to, and each time you do you will find something
you did not notice before.

Morton’s poems are intriguing, too. Take, for instance, “Photo
Album: Looking for Mother,” in which dates from 1941 up to 1963 are
noted, with a description of each photo by its date. And yet two dates,
1955 and 1959, have no description. Why not? What is not being said
here? Why does this silence speak louder than words? Interesting stuff.
This is modern poetry at its best.