After Paradise

Lynn Szabo is an assistant professor of English at Trinity Western
University in Langley, B.C.

Janis Rapoport is also a short-fiction writer and dramatist. Employing
imagery and metaphor that leads to “something which makes us try to
recall another state of being,” After Paradise, her fifth book of
poems, depicts conflicts between this world and the next (or the last).

Many of the poems are set in the secret archeology/paleontology of the
beach, where the speakers and other seekers (biologists, entomologists,
paleontologists) explore the nexus of time and space, life and death. In
the section Ghosts and Angels, epigrams provide glosses for poems

that draw upon the iconography of angelology. These poems indicate
poetry in the hands of a dramatist.

In the Borders poems, pathetic fallacy works strongly, allowing nature
to work its moments of change into the identities of speaker and reader.
At times, the narrative threatens to overpower the imagery; at other
times, it subsumes voice with exquisite humor. Interpretative images
such as those in “Public Gardens, Halifax” create moments for
reflection, whereas other poems advance conflicts that move toward
either resolution or more questions.

Readers of these esthetically and intellectually engaging poems will be
amply rewarded.