Threadbare Like Lace

Kimberly Fahner is the author of You Must Imagine the Cold Here.

When you hold a piece of good lace up to your eyes, what you see changes
your view of the world; this is the wondrous effect of Jacqueline
Baldwin’s Threadbare Like Lace. Whether she’s writing poems about
British Columbia or poems that rejoice in the power of women’s lives,
Baldwin has a grounded approach to life that is based on survival and
strength. Life itself, she writes, is “this glorious bubbling untidy
lovely laughing stuff,” and that’s the predominant tone of her work.


This is not to say that darker issues never make their appearance.
Poems like “Listening to Daddy,” “Granny’s Lament,”
“December the Sixth,” “Nalini’s Feet,” and “Getaway,” just
to mention a few, hit hard but leave the reader contemplating the
strength of the human soul, and of women’s spirits in particular, in
times of terror and torment. “December the Sixth,” a poem in
remembrance of the Montreal Massacre, strikes the heart and then
reverberates with the clarity of a bell.

Baldwin’s love for her children and her keen awareness of how her
ancestral family influences her living are dominant motifs. In
“Springtime and Danny, 25,” the poet speaks of how ancestors color
her son’s face: “Centuries adorn this Canadian face / tell me Celtic
tales / of the Outer Hebrides / of Maori canoes / of prairies / and the
Cree, who were / long generations ago / his people.” In “Grandfather
Mackenzie, Storyteller,” Baldwin pays tribute to the man who gave her
stories that will accompany her through life.

Throughout this elegant collection, Baldwin refuses to dwell in sorrow;
her gaze is directed firmly skyward at the light of hidden potential and
future possibility.