Day Songs, Night Songs

Elizabeth St Jacques is the author of Echoes All Strung Out and
Survivors: The Great Depression, 1929-1939.

This collection of 26 poems (available on cassette by the fabulous The
Teds) is another Robert Priest feast enhanced by Keith Lee’s charming
artwork. As we have come to expect of this author’s work, life and
nature are celebrated with much joy, making us appreciate the wonder of
everyday big and small moments, and of all living things. Through
Priest’s eyes, our world is the greatest and loveliest place to be.
What other place can boast of buds that “keep tryin’ / When the sun
goes spring,” a “mango morning ... apple noon-time ... [and] an
orange evening,” a “morning glory lawn,” a “cloth of icicles /
Woven upon the gate,” and Jane Frost, who paints “a frozen canyon
where the snow gulls fly”?

Priest’s fresh and comical vision, for example, transforms bathtubs
into “A tug, a tub and a little dinghy” that sail “Past the land
of knees / To the isles of feet” and gives us “Icicle tricycles”
that are “a bummer in summer.” The 14-line “I Skate” is
guaranteed to tie tongues in knots. Great fun—but not just
entertaining. His poems also speak (quietly) of the joy of friendship in
the greatest sense, of respect and sharing, of appreciation for our
planet and universe, and of being content with the gifts we are given
through just being.

Colorful, loaded with repetitions, and with captivating images and
phrases, these poems will undoubtedly be memorized and sung for a long
time to come. Highly recommended.