The Older Graces

Chris Knight is managing editor of the Canadian HR Reporter.

To say that David Manicom’s poetry moves with the rhythms of sleep is
to risk being misunderstood. His words do not put one to sleep: rather,
they lull the mind into a thoughtful somnambulism, ideas and images
sliding into one’s perception with the smoothness of a dream. In
“Accidental,” he writes: “And at six downstairs in the dim mailbox
/ You find a letter for the previous tenant / Waiting for you like a
pale hand.” Or in “Why I Need You,” a poem about the aftermath of
divorce, we are told, “There’s no heat. / The radio plays one
station / Called the voice of strangers. / It’s always the middle of
March.” The language of sleep is even brought to play in “In the
Valleys of Alma-Ata,” where we read, “... like two human hands /
Which cannot rest, two hundred miles from China, / Far from the currents
our murmurings steer, / Where we turn in unison without ever waking / On
the delicate dream craft we daily repair.”

These quiet images do not try to impose meaning on the reader, although
they clearly cover a great deal of ground, from a death in the family to
the throes of a revolution. The variety of subject matter means that
some of these poems will touch readers deeply, while others will leave a
much shallower impression; but the search is ultimately worthwhile.