Road Dances

Ellen Pilon is a library assistant in the Patrick Power Library at Saint
Mary’s University in Halifax.

Actress Joan Heney has now turned poet, and she excels in her new art. Road Dances is a slim volume of 35 short poems, each well worth reading and re-reading. Unlike so many contemporary Canadian female poets, Heney is not bitter, angry, resentful, aggressively feminist, or preoccupied with sex. Instead of reading page after page of subjective ranting and raw emotion, we readers relax in the harmony and rhythm of Heney’s superbly crafted verses. The poems are comfortable, each one offering an image, a feeling, or a thought, which stimulates further thought and reflection and begs for re-reading. In “Where Was I” she talks to her dead mother: “Where was I /when you were dying /In the room that used to be mine.” Her “black knight” gives her a white carnation and she wants to believe in him, “but /your train goes at six /and my room is papered /in white carnations.” Some of the poems, such as “White Carnations,” are short, precise images and symbols. Others are looser in structure, more narrative: “I’ve come to /sit in the Four Seasons with you /and drink martinis /tell tall stories and /‘swing on the stars’ /Only they told me that /last week you died” (“Poem for Don Agnew”). “The Giant from Calgary” is a prose picture. “Wedding Picture” is a still life. Heney’s sense of humour shines through in poems such as “The Too Large Bed” and “Notes on a Fat Man.” The style and technique of the poems are not all the same, but whichever Heney chooses, she handles skillfully. Each poem is a beautifully created masterpiece, especially “Some Small Perfect Thing,” which defies description: it demands reading. Perhaps Heney’s success stems from her naturalness; she doesn’t try to be more or less than she is and she is comfortable with herself. The poems will appeal to Everywoman.