The Garden Going on without Us

Carolyn M. Hackland was editor of the Journal of the Canadian Dental Association and lives in Ottawa.

Lorna Crozier, in her fourth book of poetry, provides the reader with powerful yet sensitive images of womanhood, love, sex, and Canadian life.

Crozier, who has spent much of her life on the prairies, is not a poet of obscure and symbolic images. Rather, her poems give the reader feelings and images with which every woman may identify. Divided into five sections, the book takes the reader from childhood images in “Angels in Snow” to images of old age in “Nijinsky.”

The first section, “Forms of Innocence,” deals mainly in the images of childhood and adolescence, including first sexual encounters and first love.

The second section, “Fishing in Air,” contains some of the most powerful images in the book. In poems such as “Stillborn” and “Loon Song” Crozier treats pain and beauty with a stark sensitivity that captures her readers.

The remaining sections of the book deal mainly in more of Crozier’s stark, yet powerful images of womanhood and prairie life. In poems such as “Spring Storm 1916” Crozier recreates a harsh prairie world that can be uniquely Canadian.

A poet of spare images, showing at times a wry and unique sense of humour, Crozier will not appeal to every reader. Yet her images stay in the mind long after the book has been closed. In power and grace of word, this book of poems is a fine achievement.