Blue Himalayan Poppies

Susan McKnight is an administrator of the Courts Technology Integrated Justice Project at the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General.

Jay Ruzesky has published two other well-received collections: Am I Glad
to See You and Painting the Yellow House Blue. In Blue Himalayan
Poppies, he introduces everyday experiences and places in a totally
unique way. For example, in “Lending Library” he takes the simple
act of lending a book to his wife’s friend and turns it into a sensual
love story. In “Face,” he expresses the anxiety of a new father as
his daughter takes her afternoon nap: “I pick up small plastic people
/ trapped for months under the sofa / wanting to tell them grief / is
the other side / of the pleasure their faces speak of.”

Ruzesky uses sensual, emotive language to transcend the mundane. His
descriptions conjure up fertile images that slide into panoramas,
spinning off the page into the reader’s imagination. Family, friends,
and even strangers come alive, and their extreme importance in
Ruzesky’s life is felt through every line. His love of life and
concern for its tenuous nature permeate his verse; however, the inklings
of anxiety and despair are confidently encased in the hope that
“sometimes things go well.”

Ruzesky full page of acknowledgments at the back of the book specifying
for whom various poems were written lends an even more personal identity
to his words.