Heron Cliff
- Publisher
- Signature Editions
- Initial publish date
- Apr 2007
- Category
- Canadian
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781897109175
- Publish Date
- Apr 2007
- List Price
- $14.95
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Description
In Heron Cliff, Margo Button, like all of us, is uprooted by the unique travels of an individual life. From the title poem about the giving up of a beloved home where a son had taken his own life, to poems about her own childhood and interconnectedness to the ever-lengthening branches of the family tree from grandparents to grandchildren, to poems about the larger upheavals and passions of the world–the lingering effects of the Great Depression, Europe during the Cold War, Guatemala and Beirut in the 1970s, and 9/11–to "Blue Dahlias," which, in its fifty-nine wide-ranging and unpredictable, yet coherent and focussed, ghazal-like sections, evokes in ecstatic detail the new home, gardens, and ideas where she has come to settle, Button articulates a vision of life where the darkest grief has a place alongside the most profound joy. In Heron Cliff, the heart moves house and finds a home once more in the world. For both the consummate skill of the writing and the depth of passion expressed, Margo Button's fourth book of poetry is a remarkable achievement.
About the author
Contributor Notes
Margo (Bartlett) Button is a retired French and Spanish teacher who taught high school in Hong Kong, Chile, Lebanon, and Canada. The Unhinging of Wings, her first book, recounts the death of her son, who suffered from schizophrenia. It won the B.C. Book Prize/Dorothy Livesay Award for Poetry in 1996, was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, and was later adapted for the stage. Button's poetry has won national and international awards, including Arc's Confederation Poets Prize and the Petra Kenney Poetry Award. "Blue Dahlias" co-won The Malahat Review's Long Poem Prize and was awarded Gold in the poetry category of the 2006 National Magazine Awards. Her other books of poetry include The Shadows Fall Behind and The Elders' Palace (in English and Inuinnaqtun). She makes her home in Victoria, B.C.
Excerpt: Heron Cliff (by (author) Margo Button)
Blue Dahlias
A hoe, a spade, a rake – what more do I need? Gardening is an instrument of grace.
Ordinary delights grow here – barren wort, bugbane, fountain grass, meadow rue.
And maybe, one day, blue dahlias – something rare, unheard of.
Why build a fancy house when you desire a cottage? Travel doesn't satisfy craving. Craving for what?
Dervishes whirl around their hearts, burn like a torch. This too is prayer.
Gardener Teapots
Sept. 12, 2001
This morning the sun rises alizarin crimson juice pressed from the madder root. I take my favourite porcelain mug stencilled with an English country garden and while the water boils, add a pinch of Russian Caravan to the tiny pot with the cracked lid.
Gardener teapots red,yellow, blue bone china made in Russia under Peter the Great were lugged by camel caravans over the Silk Road to Pakistan.
Waiting for the tea to steep, I hear the Great Blue Heron's kraak as it lumbers into flight
birds in the air, fish in the sea, and the world did not end yesterday in New York.
When the pots broke, menders salvaged the jagged bits, bound them with the copper lugs and sealed the cracks with tar so they could again brew tea.
No Trade-Ins Allowed
I bought, you bought a:
Tsimshian mask of a human transforming into an eagle
The winter we accused our son of using drugs, he reproached us for having possessions
Thai Buddha with mother-of-pearl eyes
He shaved his head and in monk's dress meditated among the wild rhododendrons
Oxford red leather Bible that lacked ingredients tasty for worms
Euphoric, he communed with God, blamed us for not sending him to church as a child
Wool rug from Beijing ancient coins woven dead centre
He sold his gold chain and the ring engraved with his Chinese name but that didn't drive away his demons
Gilt carving of soldiers on horseback from a home ransacked by Red Guards
One night in a back alley, he wrestled his father to the ground, stole his wallet
Balinese kris, its bloody history embodied in the blade
He ripped off the hilt and pawned an ebony lion with ruby eyes
Floppy clown dressed in red hearts from close to home
After he was diagnosed we tried to make a deal with God
Sky-Calling
for Ron
The albatross has a wingspan twice as wide as you are tall and hollow bones so light
she barely moves her wings in flight, those long thin wings hinges to fold like an origami bird
though she stumbles on earth with big webbed feet – a gooney in floppy shoes.
Every winter she circumnavigates Antarctica, buffeted by icy currents and Katabatic winds,
lands on the ocean to feed and rest – though how she sleeps in avalanches of water
is a mystery to me. Once a year she returns to breed on the Tairoa cliffs,
flapping her wings in a hullabaloo, craning her neck to the sky and screeching for her mate
until he comes and sits by her side, as if to say, I need you. I'll always need you.
Editorial Reviews
“In 'Blue Dahlias,' the brilliant long sequence that concludes the book, moving house has become a reality. Button employs a series of ghazal-like stanzas to maximum effect, each one consisting of five (mostly) autonomous couplets. Ghazals are by their nature oblique–structurally, thematically, emotionally–their only connection being the creative consciousness of the individual poet. Traditionally, ghazals include exclamations and questions, a device that also works well in Button's hands, and the form in its modified way is well suited to the onrush of observation and emotion at work … Button's work is full of passion; Heron Cliff is a generous book and a good read.”
—Barbara Myers, Arc Poetry Magazine