Uncommon Prayer

Kim Fahner is the author of You Must Imagine the Cold Here.

Susan McMaster’s fourth collection of poems ably evokes “God” as a
creative force that is metaphorically transformed in the environment
that surrounds us. The wonder of the Gatineau Hills landscape, described
in the poem “How God Sees,” reflects the difference of philosophies
that separates “looking” from “seeing.”

Prayer is the dominant motif. “Pray for Me,” “How Windows
Pray,” “How Computers Pray,” “How Flowers Pray,” “Prayers in
Space,” “The Function of Prayer,” and even the mischievously
titled “How Dandelions Prey” leave the reader contemplating the
nature of reflection and prayer. As McMaster writes in “The Function
of Prayer,” we need to learn how to pause and then receive, with
grateful and poetic hearts, small gifts from the universe. Prayer need
not take place, McMaster maintains, in a traditional church setting.
Instead, she is a proponent of finding silence, contemplation, and the
sheer introspection of prayer in all things poetic.

While challenging the reader to think of poetry as prayer, McMaster
also plays with perception. She slips in and out of various voices with
ease, and one is particularly drawn to her appropriation of the voices
of objects or pieces of antique furniture. Poems like “Outhouse,”
“The Old Woman’s Chair,” “The Old Man’s Chair,” “The Old
Couch,” and “Refinishing” all evoke quirky and new ways of looking
at things.

McMaster’s poetry is like prayer: it centres, calms, and encourages
contemplation in a busy world that usually doesn’t wait for anyone.