The Proper Lover

Sharon Goodier was a poet in Toronto.

“It was a lucky thing to love a poem,” Gough begins in “For Alden.” The reader certainly feels lucky to have these poems to love. Gough weaves poems to his wife with poems recalling his Newfoundland childhood, a eulogy for his grandmother, local personalities, and poems about adult life in Toronto.

Gough’s writing is mature in form and content. He employs a soft lyricism in some, a storytelling style in others, some, such as labyrinthine thought lines such as “Autopsy for a nun,” surrealism such as in “Sermon,” and a rambling stream of conversation in “Raisin pies” and “Snowball.”

Gough sees gentle irony in what to a lesser mind would end up as cynicism. His poetry is food for mind, heart, and sense. A television producer who has given us “War Brides” and “Charlie Grant’s War,” what he says of himself in “For Alden” is true for us:

“It takes a very special poem to make me smile

To let me do some good old-fashioned reading.”

William Gough lives up to his own standards.