We see that javascript is disabled or not supported by your browser - javascript is needed for important actions on the site. Read more

What's New - Home - Login

Member $avings: $81,589,794.28 | Books Available: 791,688 | Members Online: 259

Swap Used Books - Buy New Books at Great Prices!

How To Swap Books Sign Up Search submenu

PBS Market (New Books)

Gift Buying Guide

Book Browser Advanced Search Books Posted Today Member Book Reviews Award Winning Books NYT Best Sellers Amazon Best Sellers Most Traveled Copies Club Wish List

Discussion Forums Book Lists

Club Lists My Book Lists My Watched Lists Create a List

Blog Donations

School Donation Program In Memory of... Military Donation Program Friends of PBS

Box-O-Books Maps The Eclectic Pen Fun Stuff

20 Questions Sudoku Bookmark Creator

Top 100

Requests Posts Swappers Referrers Reviewers

Pulse of PBS Spread The Word

Invite Friends Bookmarks Facebook Page Facebook App More Ways...

Photo Gallery Recipes Club Tag Cloud Member Testimonials

Help Center submenu

How To Swap Books Browse Help Docs Ask the Librarian PBS Member Icons Live Help

Kiosk

PBS Market (New Books) Go Shopping Buy Credits Buy PBS Money Upgrade Membership Gift Certificates Transfer Credits

Need Help?

Search - The Alma Elegies

The Alma Elegies
Author: Allan Cooper

A two-part volume of poetry, Allan Cooper?s Alma Elegies pairs the poems from his very first book with new poems written in the same place. The first half of the book was written in the autumn of 1978, when Cooper was living alone in his great-uncle?s house. These poems were published the following year in Blood-Lines. Twenty-five ... more »years later, having raised a family in the same house, Cooper has written a series of reflections or ?answering poems? about occupying that space and about the coming of winter years later. Cooper?s early poems attend to the qualities of light, the texture of the soil, the turning of leaves and the build-up of snow with the gradual onset of winter. Inside the house, Cooper comes to know rooms still occupied by his ancestors as he makes space for his own occupation as a descendant and as a poet. These realizations are accompanied by tributes to the work and lives of other artists ? Herman Hesse, Vincent Van Gogh, Robert Bly ? whose paths inspire Cooper?s own and whose painting and writing supply images parallel to those in his immediate surroundings. In the second half of the collection, entitled ?The Gathering Cold,? Cooper offers reflections imbued with some of the same local imagery and personalities. These new poems also acknowledge the weight of decades gone by and the sense of belonging that has developed over time. Cooper?s work engages the spirit of days and lives passed, and the animism of his environs. Here too, former existence filters into the present, as the light of bygone mornings colours the poet?s view of ones that follow, and bygone generations continue to fill the rooms of his family?s home. According to the author: "In the fall of 2004, I told poet Harry Thurston that it had been twenty-five years since my first book, Blood-Lines, was published, and about fifteen years since it had gone out of print. I wanted to do something with it, but it seemed too small on its own. Harry suggested that I write a new sequence of poems to accompany it. The time seemed right: for years I had lived in the ancestral house in Alma, NB, with my family. But now my daughter was entering university and my wife was teaching full time. During the days I found myself in an ocean of solitude. So I started writing answering poems. The tradition seems lost now, but Wang Wei and P?ei Ti wrote the Wang River Sequence over 1200 years ago ? twenty poems each. The object was for one poet to write a poem, and the other to answer him. I decided to write answering poems to myself, still facing many of the issues and concerns I felt in 1978."

ISBN-13: 9781554470365
ISBN-10: 1554470366
Publication Date: 4/30/2007
Pages: 47
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: Gaspereau Press
Book Type: Paperback
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Back to the Top ↑

Search - The Alma Elegies

Loading...