The Still Before a Storm

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

First collections of poetry, like first loves, are often embarrassingly sentimental, clichéd, predictable, and easily forgettable. They are also often insightful, refreshing, and penetratingly honest. D. Young’s first collection, The Still Before a Storm, unfortunately has all of these weaknesses and few of the strengths.

In “Thumbing and Strumming,” for example, Young sets up a one-dimensional confrontation between youth (free, generous, human, lonely) and their elders (close-minded, traditional, unbending). But neither her use of language (“Get a job Cut your hair”), nor her theme ever goes beyond the stereotypical portrayal. Her words carry no weight: “But freedom is as far again / as the chains that are wound around you / that have bound you / to the sky-scraping jungle.”

Young tries hard, too hard, to deal with “important issues” but in doing so becomes, aside from commonplace, removed from her poetry. Her words ramble on, for example, and there are far too many adjectives to make the poetry sincere or realistic. Take these lines from “Grand Avenue Backyard”: “While audacious fools lie pondering / in their empty philosophic caves / doubting your monstrous bark and sway / by a flickering firelight.” Ho hum.