by Wendy Donawa
Frontenac House
2021/$19.95/112 pp.
Confession: I do not read books of poetry from front to back—rather, I prefer to hunt and peck. This may do a disservice to poets who fret about the order of things. Apologies. But I do read every poem, eventually. In Wendy Donawa’s new poetry collection, our bodies’ unanswered questions, I landed first, near the beginning, on a piece called “Memoir: A Cento,” and that was enough for me to be in love. This poem, which contains the title of this collection, is a gorgeous distillation of a life that asks us to consider the question “so, what are the important moments of your life?” It is a stunning piece that moves from earliest memory to “season’s last berries.” I have returned again and again to stanzas here and elsewhere throughout the collection—such as this one:
Every angel is terrible arriving from the cancer clinic
The hospital tarmac steams with rain gold aspen leaves
Plaster the windshield coins for the ferryman.
This collection, divided into three sections, shows a willingness to look at anything. Nothing is off limits. In “The Day the Syrian Child Washed Ashore,” a normal day is juxtaposed against the horror of what the tide brought in. “Journal of the Plague Year, Redux (1)” is a beautiful distillation of navigating the pandemic—from “At first, we didn’t notice the change much” to “We said, Well, there will always be war, epidemics, famine. Such a pity.” And finally:
find themselves muttering preserve us
oh Lord while waking and guard us while sleeping
not yet not yet not me not me not
The journey Donawa takes us on is highly relatable, and terrifying, and true. “Journal of the Plague Year, Redux (2),” offers a smaller take on the COVID time, with the return of finches to a high balcony, and again the truth of this one small moment is astounding. In the final poem of this collection, “Short-Haul Domestic Flight,” the landing gear on an airplane fails, the reaction of the passengers is quietly Canadian, and there is this moment of grace:
Sleepless, pyjama’d, startled by the window’s thwack,
a nightbird seduced by my reading lamp.
In the morning, two angel wings’ perfect stencil on the
dusty pane.
These poems mourn and rejoice; they are long exhalations of hope. They surprise and shock, and are sometimes gentle reminders of who we can be. I have defaced this book (a sign that a book is well-loved by me) by turning down the corners of my favourite poems. Wendy Donawa is a poet at the height of her powers, firing on all cylinders. Highly recommended.
—Thomas Trofimuk is a poet and novelist in Edmonton.
