Hour of the Pearl

Donalee Moulton-Barrett was a writer and editor in Halifax.

Rhona McAdam’s writing style is an enigma. Simplistic and image-overloaded one page, powerful and detailed the next.

For example, “Coming of Age on the Island,” a metaphorically overworked poem, ends predictably with these lines: “she stands on the deck of a sailboat, broken meat / trailing behind her on the water, watching / as the life raft floats through the limits of her vision / carrying her mother, who is reading as she drifts / through the summer afternoon, awaiting rescue.” Compare that to these concluding lines from the next poem, “I Looked up to Find the Clouds”: “... but I fear the inevitable discovery / one day of a toy, a letter, a stray sock; / one day when all the rest is accounted for, one of these / will reveal itself and in its ordinary / solitary presence strike me down.”

While the first passage weighs the reader down, “Clouds” invites the reader to move on line after line, verse after verse. Here McAdarn has crafted a rhythmic, finely-tuned poem, offering us a personal insight that goes far beyond the personal in the telling.

While McAdam succeeds frequently throughout Hour of the Pearl, all too often she doesn’t.