Covenant of Salt

Description

76 pages
$14.95
ISBN 1-894294-84-X
DDC C811'.54

Year

2005

Contributor

Reviewed by R. Gordon Moyles

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

Review

“Pull the fish out of the depths / Cut the throat / Head and gut it /
Scrub it clean and bed it in salt.... / Because it takes less than a
month / For a love letter to decompose / But salt will keep anything.”

Robin McGrath’s is the authentic Newfoundland voice. Her poetry is
bedded in the rich folklore, local customs, vivid imagery, indigenous
vernacular, and rhythmic speech patterns of her (obviously beloved)
island province. Her range of poetic musings is truly extraordinary:
from Jack (the one who was “every inch a sailor”), to her Nan
(“Give her a ball of steel wool at breakfast / And she’ll knit you a
stove by evening”), to her “coopies” (hens), to such daily tasks
as ironing (“I wish that Jasus one-legged man / Would come and collect
his socks”), to the sad state of Labrador Inuit in “Viet Nain”
(“And even the cold Atlantic / Can’t douse the flames / Of children
in Davis Inlet / Immolating themselves with gasoline”), McGrath amazes
with her virtuosity. And, from the purely whimsical (“The Eke-Names of
Jerseyside”) to the very poignant (“Aviatrix in utero”), she can
make you laugh, experience the irony of life, or taste bitter tears. And
who, apart from T.S. Eliot, could create a more apt (more metaphysical)
conceit than this: “The sun rises from the ocean like a pease-pudding
/ From a boiled dinner”? That’s pure Newfoundland, and, as with all
her poetry, it shocks, delights, and thrills in its originality and
daring.

Citation

McGrath, Robin., “Covenant of Salt,” Canadian Book Review Annual Online, accessed December 21, 2024, https://cbra.library.utoronto.ca/items/show/16392.