Home and Away

R.G. Moyles is professor emeritus of English at the University of
Alberta, the co-author of Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities:
British Views of Canada, 1880–1914, and the author of The Salvation
Army and the Public.

Home and Away is a collection of poems about people and places near and
far away—Mrs. Burton, Notre Dame Bay, St. John’s, Istanbul. Wiseman
sees poetry in the ordinary things of life and has a gift for producing
concrete images (e.g., the drowned shark wrapped partly in tatters of
cod trap). Emotion and language are perfectly blended in “December
Hockey”: “We scatter and gather on a smooth miracle, / the work of a
windless night. / When the puck / rolls near the unlocked end where the
brook / circulates, a small child full of misplaced trust / retrieves
it. / The ice is clear, revealing waist deep water with white air
trapped in places, / and moves in waves, a boom and a grumble / under
the burden of the skaters. / I can see my house, my mother, heartache at
the window as I make my own choices.” At their best, Wiseman’s poems
demand repeated visitations.