The Face in the Garden

R.G. Moyles is a professor of English at the University of Alberta,
co-author of Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities: British Views of
Canada, 1880-1914, and co-editor of The Collected Works of E.J. Pratt.

The “face” in Lent’s metaphorical garden is not one but many—the
faces of his parents, his siblings, his lovers, and his friends, and
nearly always his own face. In this book of related stories and poems
Lent uses the familiar (“oldest”) metaphor of the garden to explore
and query “how we cultivate / sew [sic] tend weed / give life to our
lives,” and to peer into the lives of his family to realize “where
beauty grew and what nourished it.” In the stories, grouped in a
section called “Towards the Gardens,” Lent deals with the roots and
tendrils of his private garden—that is, in more prosaic terms, with
his family upbringing and its emotional energy. “Their inheritance was
a gift and a ‘pain in the arse’ as they themselves might say.” In
parts two and three (“In the Gardens” and “Facing the Gardens,”
respectively) he takes his reader through a variety of gardens—both
physical and psychical—in poems that may be either read in the full
context of the garden motif or read individually, as inclination
dictates.

It all adds up to an interesting excursion—being led down the garden
path of Lent—but make no mistake: everything in his garden is not
lovely. As the oxymoronic poem “Squared Circle” puts it, “nothing
is redeemed, everything is redeemed.” For the garden is often as much
an illusion as a reality. Still, the visit is worth making and certainly
worth making with Lent.