A Blue with Blood in It

Description

70 pages
$12.95
ISBN 1-55050-174-7
DDC C811'.54

Publisher

Year

2000

Contributor

Reviewed by Melanie Marttila

Melanie Marttila is a Sudbury-based freelance writer and writing
consultant.

Review

Elizabeth Philips’s poetry is wonderfully organic. While each poem in
this, her third collection, is centred on a natural theme, nature is
more than a metaphor or something observed and reported on. Nature is
inextricably entwined with each subject Philips writes about; it is part
of her vision, and, as we read, it becomes part of our vision as well.

The collection’s title comes from a description of the color of
gentians. “A blue with blood in it” is a phrase that could also
describe the organic core of Philips’s writing. A quotation from Meng
Chiao explains: “When the twisted tree shall become my body / Then I
shall begin to live out my natural span.”

Philips’s words flow across the page, the line breaks as easy as
breathing. Her poetic world is a wonderful place—a place in which a
“bear came / to eat her loneliness”; in which poppy petals “like
wings of blood … [form] a stain at the base of my pupils”; in which
petals are “cut and milled / by frost … into pure absence”; in
which the exclamation “I’ve dropped my cloud” makes perfect sense.
A Blue with Blood in It is highly recommended for just about any
library.

Citation

Philips, Elizabeth., “A Blue with Blood in It,” Canadian Book Review Annual Online, accessed December 2, 2024, https://cbra.library.utoronto.ca/items/show/5436.