The Breath You Take from the Lord

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.

The title poem of Patrick Friesen’s collection is a long sequence
exploring all the great issues of life, though in a concrete and
evocative rather than abstract way. He returns in his mind to a clearing
on his grandfather’s farm and speculates in his trademark lines about
God, family, and nature. The use of the second person in the poem is
somewhat distracting. The image of “breath” conveys both the
spiritual (spirit means breath, after all) and the physical basis of
living beings. He counts losses and winds up partially illuminated,
partially benighted at the complexity of life. The poem is full of what
Keats liked to call “depth of speculation.” It also concludes that
“love is unruly the disorder that brings good it can it can.”

The shorter poems in the volume include commemorations of the seasons
and his parents. This is a mature, almost autumnal work, dignified and
full of strong feelings.