The Bare Plum of Winter Rain

Edward L. Edmonds is a professor of education at the University of
Prince Edward Island and an honorary chief of the Mi’kmaq of Prince
Edward Island.

Every poem in this collection is a tactile engagement with life. For
Patrick Lane, truth—whether pleasant or not—is mediated by the body,
human or animal. In the body, and in bodily acts, lie man’s tragedy
and guilt. At the same time, the body is a source of beauty and
imaginative effusion for this poet. He writes with a breathless, urgent
style. Some readers may feel uncomfortable in the presence of this
style, with its undertone of obsessiveness, but Lane handles it with
mastery, making it the vehicle of authority. The book’s whimsical
cover illustration cleverly presents a ripe and succulent antithesis to
the image of the tree in “winter rain.”