Night Tides

Bob Lincoln is Director of Acquisitions at the University of Manitoba
Libraries.

George Swede’s Night Tides are short poems, haiku, and glimpses of life through the eye and voice of a detached and somewhat ironic narrator. There is a great effort to simplify the imagery and action. Titles are often essential to the message, and elaborate conceits are developed in a few lines. There are poems of persons who are trapped and neglected. The characters are sensitive and intertwined in a natural landscape that presses them. Marriage is compared to the flight of a bird that is paradoxically housebound. The conceits can be strained: “Lately /our mouths /are full /of branches /When we speak /too closely /they tangle.” This kind of writing is both the strength of this collection and its weakness. The poems are often explained rather than having the language demonstrate the meanings. The psychological dramas in the poems are veiled or hinted at, and too often are passed over for too-predictable conclusions. The titles hint at major conflicts and events, but the poems defer addressing them or giving them depth and substance.

The better poems do make the conceits work, as in “After all these years,” or “House for sale,” or “White walls.” The poems here demonstrate their ideas, and the language is tighter and less predictable; these can still surprise.