Winter Epigrams & Epigrams to Ernesto Cardenal in Defense of Claudia

Mark Bastien was a Toronto-based journalist.

Dionne Brand has found a unique way to compose long poems in this book: write a series of brief epigrams that alone would be little more than hastily scrawled thoughts but together are a powerful, satisfying whole.

Brand, a West Indian poet now living in Toronto, has written three other books of poetry, including one for children. In the introduction of Winter Epigrams & Epigrams to Ernesto Cardenal in Defence of Claudia she is described as “a poet fully aware of her origins as poet, woman and social being.” Regardless of what that means, Brand is a great storyteller, and the epigrams in this book are short, sharp shocks of insight.

The first section of the book, “Winter Epigrams,” is a reaction to the cold Canadian winter from a poet nurtured on sunshine: Brand’s brand of sarcasm and wit is as frosty and chilling as the climate she so unwillingly braves.

The second set of epigrams is written in the style of (and in response to) Ernesto Cardenal, the Nicaraguan poet and priest. Cardenal wrote a series of love poems to a flighty woman named Claudia; Brand responds, using both her own voice and that of Claudia. Although these are love poems, they are about love from a feminist viewpoint and in a political context:

Sometimes Brand’s epigrams are ugly outbursts of frustration and rage (“Let’s celebrate hungry! Let’s riot”); sometimes they are tender outpourings of emotion (“And I am so afraid / of all of them / and this tenderness”); sometimes they are almost clinically thought-out political cants (“so we spent hours and hours / learning Marx”). They always transcend the ordinary.