Global Warnings

Hugh Oliver is the former editor-in-chief of the OISE (Ontario Institute
for Studies in Education) Press. He is the author of Hoblyn: A Novel in
Three Parts and Voices from the Cradle, Echoes from the Grave: A Volume
of Verse.

Patricia Keeney’s poetry embraces a wide range of
experience—historically (from ancient times to the present),
geographically (Greece and Britain, China and Africa), and analytically
in her exploration of the complexities of human relationships. She
displays a sure command of vocabulary and an ability to create imagery
that is powerful and arresting. “Matriarchal form in furry red
requests her funeral youth: will you, children, bear the pall will you
carry me away?”

At the same time, I have to work hard trying to understand what she
intends to say, and often I do not have the remotest idea. In this, of
course, her poetry shares much of the obscurity of contemporary verse,
governed as it is by a personal, often private, symbolism.