Untying the Tongue

Chris Knight is copy editor of the National Post in Toronto.

Gregory Cook plays the role of the poet as explorer, but he is an
involved wanderer, engaging (and engaging us) in what he finds. The 48
short poems in this collection variously delve into family, romantic
love, a city park, and the author’s travels. In them, he wrings
meaning from a cloth of simple words, as in a poem set on a research
vessel: “We idle into the sleep of a pod / of right whales / trying to
remember what comes / before loneliness.” Or in one of his love poems,
passionate without being sappy: “how she carries the heat from dead
stars / in the ice of our first footprints home.”

Cook also has the knack of making family portraits accessible: “after
all these decades she is found with her needles, / unwinding a flock of
sheep / as sweaters and mittens for a soldier gone dead.” Words are
neither minced nor wasted.

Finally, Cook is a poet’s poet. If you lean toward writing, his verse
will have you searching for a pen to put down your own thoughts.