Dangerous Elements

Susan McKnight is an administrator with the Ontario government.

In this deeply spiritual book, the award-winning poet Sarah Klassen
brings the reader face to face with dangerous elements in a variety of
contexts and settings. The poems are organized into six sections.
Section 1 consists of tender (but never maudlin) poems dealing with the
debilitating illness and death of the writer’s mother. Sections 2 and
3 focus on the personal experiences of the writer in her daily life in
Canada (she quite often uses paintings as the source of her poetry).
Section 4 offers vignettes of contemporary Lithuania, the birthplace of
Klassen’s mother, while the poems in Section 5 consist of entries from
the journal of a female astronaut (here we discover that the dangerous
elements in space are not that different from the dangerous elements on
earth).

Lastly, Section 6 is a series of poems based on the engravings of Jan
Luyken (1649–1712). These engravings depict the torture and deaths of
the Anabaptists martyrs in the 16th century. While the poetry here is
simple, just as the faith of the martyrs was simple, the emotions
generated are complex and haunting. These poems have been featured with
musical accompaniment in performances of “Singing at the Fire: Voices
of Anabaptist Martyrs.”

Klassen creates visual images that stay with the reader long after the
book is finished; her poetry is inspiring in its simplicity and
strength.