Guernica Editions
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Footprints of Dark Energy
Guernica Editions, Fall 2019
166 pages
Trade Paperback
ISBN13: 9781771834278
ISBN10: 1771834277
English
$20.00 Canada, $20.00 US
Read more from the Essential Poets Series
The title poem of this collection takes us on an epic journey across past and present historical events and through spaces defined by the natural sciences, as it explores the challenges of being human in these troubled times. It is accompanied by a gathering of shorter poems that confront the dark forces in our world as they struggle for the light at the end of the tunnel. In stark imagery, these poems turn words into music to celebrate the anguish and the glory of being alive.
To be alive can never be enough for us / but it's all we've got, and / we have it to make choices / and in choosing we affirm what we deny.
Critics and fellow poets have acclaimed his poetry. Patrick White wrote: “Henry Beissel is undoubtedly a Canadian poet of the first rank. He writes with the clarity and precision demanded of a strict imagist, and yet manages, without overburdening the issue, to give the image symbolic weight.” The late F.R. Scott said about his CANTOS NORTH: “The Canadian imagination, as elusive as the Canadian identity, is nevertheless a reality. Henry Beissel finds its constant source of strength and renewal in the wonder of our northland … This epic is the first to see it in its entirety, as a matrix which binds the whole together in a national mythology.” And Keith Garebian declared that “SEASON OF BLOOD is one of the most powerful, moving, lyrical triumphs in modern poetry.”
Patrick White, F.R. Scott, Keith Garebian
.. a much-needed compassionate wisdom for those—all of us—travelling into our planet’s uncertain future.
Neil Querengesser, Canadian Literature
Awards
- Ottawa Book Award
Reviews
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Gifts for the Journey: Footprints of Dark Energy
Canadian Literature - October 7, 2020
Books by Henry Beissel
