Red Shoes in the Rain

Carolyn Hlus was a lecturer in English literature at the University of Alberta, Edmonton.

Red Shoes in the Rain, Jan Conn’s first published collection of poetry, is divided into four independent sections: “Choices,” “Japanese Journal,” “The Rose Enters and Becomes You,” and “A Matter of Time.” The poems in “Japanese Journal” describe the author’s impressions acquired on a Canada Council-sponsored cycling tour of Japan in 1982. The poems in the other sections, as so often occurs in first collections of poetry, especially collections from this particular press, suffer from the absence of any thread of continuity or similarity of purpose.

However, the book, perhaps indicative of Conn’s scientific background — she is a doctoral candidate in entymology — is characterized by rich, unique, and brazen images. Images from nature are imaginatively linked to human relationships. In “The Decades Dream On,” for example, Conn writes, “even the waves here are thin, /tight-lipped, reminding us what happens /when lovers begin to turn away.” But it is in the poems in “Japanese Journal” that Conn makes the most effective analogies. She uses the Japanese setting to describe her mood of lingering sadness at being separated from her lover. In the poem of the same name, she compares herself to “a match blown out in the dark.” After describing the “full moon outside /splashing white light on the covers,” she states, “I would give anything /to have you beside me, /night and moonlight caught /in your hair and eyes.”

Although Conn’s imagery is sharp and vivid, her poems lack the spirituality characteristic of polished poetry. They need a boost of soul substance to make them vital and alive. Lines like “sunlight spills down like /crates of mandarins upended” need editing or rewriting. These flaws, one hopes, will be taken care of in Conn’s next collection.