The Dominion of Love
An Anthology of Canadian Love Poems
- Publisher
- Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd.
- Initial publish date
- Feb 2001
- Category
- Canadian, Anthologies (multiple authors), General
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781550172386
- Publish Date
- Feb 2001
- List Price
- $21.95
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Description
For as long as we have communicated by words, men and women have turned to poets to help them express the surges of emotion that accompany the feelings we call romantic love. Recognizing that "love's domain is as huge, as vast as Canada itself," acclaimed poet Tom Wayman set out in 1997 to compile an anthology of the nation's best poetry on the subject - the result is The Dominion of Love.
The Dominion of Love is a collection of poems by fifty of Canada's top writers, including Margaret Atwood, Earle Birney, Marilyn Bowering, Leonard Cohen, Lorna Crozier, Joy Kogawa, Patrick Lane, Dorothy Livesay, Susan Musgrave, Michael Ondaatje, Al Purdy, Shannon Stewart, Phyllis Webb, Howard White and Patricia Young. Strikingly perceptive, literary and passionate, these poems explore the landscape of love and romance. They map the complexities of first love, eroticism and marriage all while avoiding the effusive sentimentality that often accompanies this genre.
The Dominion of Love is divided into four sections: "You Have the Lovers," which explores the breathless wonder we experience when we first fall in love; "In Darkness We Find Each Other," which celebrates the curious fact that love often does best at night; "Running to Surrender," which praises long-term relationships; and "Away with Words," two poems that explore the tangled links between love and the language we use to express it.
"My hope is that the poems of this anthology will help make anyone's journey across love's provinces and territories more sure-footed, cheerful, exciting, successful," writes Wayman in his introduction. "Those who have written about where we journey provide us with the same benefits of any national literature - an expanded sense of place, and a deeper perception of those who inhabit this country."
About the author
Excerpt: The Dominion of Love: An Anthology of Canadian Love Poems (edited by Tom Wayman)
I HATE LOVE
by Di Brandt
It just hurts like hell and
where does it ever get you
watching the heart open
against wishing against
the old wound's wisdom
again again the prairies
folding your desire
like postage stamps licked
and sent the air full of
messages contrary to logic
contrary to the space that
exists between us that's
what you said you're too
far away and me not remembering
the geography the days of
the week not remembering
distances only the light
falling slanted and radiant
around you in the kitchen
your arms strong and tender
in spite of the words said
and not said in an afternoon
where does it ever get you
BENDS
Erin Moure
What the heart is is not enough.
That I can open it and
let you enter
an ocean so dense
you'll get the bends if you surface.
That you will be open to the love of every being:
I crave this,
it makes me possible, anarchic, calling
your attention,
your fingers on my ear or soft neck,
the light on each side of your face, altered
as you speak to me
Oh speak to me
I have a friend who says the heart's
a shovel, do you believe this?
My heart is a wild muscle, that's all,
open as the ocean
at the end of the railway,
a cross-country line pulled by four engines
Whatever it is I don't care, it is not enough
unless you see it
unless I can make you
embrace and breathe it, its light that knows you,
unless you cry out in it, and swim
Other titles by
The Road to Appledore
Or How I Went Back to the Land Without Ever Having Lived There in the First Place
How Can You Live Here?
Watching a Man Break a Dog’s Back
Poems for a Dark Time
If You're Not Free at Work, Where Are You Free
Literature and Social Change
Helpless Angels
a book of music
The Shadows We Mistake for Love
Stories
The Order in Which We Do Things
The Poetry of Tom Wayman
Winter's Skin
Dirty Snow
