The Bare Plum of Winter

Patrick Lane

Harbour Publishing 2000

Patrick Lane In Cab 43

Patrick Lane

CD from Cyclops Press

Review by paulo da costa

Lane's The Bare Plum of Winter is not poetry from the right or the left side of the brain. Words percolate from the heart through a vein seemingly reaching the gist of human life.

In his latest book Lane continues to extend his gaze into that which is missing: a space, yet not an emptiness from which everything appears to be born from: "The night of my conception I wasn't there./My father searched among the broken boards/and the dust of the rooms, my mother/behind him, her hand on his heavy back,/her mouth urgent, whispering, Find him,/Find him. (…)

By the sheer deft and precise simplicity of his words, Lane belongs in the company of poets such as Wis» awa Szymborska, Yehuda Amichai or EugJ nio de Andrade. Words that weave stories and images to show us a world we recognise, to show us how we love and fail to, how we die. Poems flow without commotion. An assured and crystalline lucidity that satiates the thirst for insight and revelation. These poems are satisfying epiphanies, and perhaps all we can ever hope to understand about the beauty of human existence.

Beauty

Once you knew you were beautiful

But you don't know that anymore

Which makes you even more beautiful.

The most beautiful women are the ones

Who don't know. They are why

Men lie down beside them in the strict observance

Of grace, wanting to be a part of such forgetting.

Patrick Lane In Cab 43 is a jewel of a CD for those who prefer their poetry administered orally. Now, to sneak in a poem on those long road journeys, you don't have to take every rest stop. With this CD, Lane recite his poems to us wherever we might be. Some of the poems were recorded in a taxi cab, a downtown park, the poet's backyard. Vintage Lane is included: The Happy Little Towns, Dominion Day Dance, Elephants, among many others, as well as newer ones such as Cunt, now published in his latest book.

These recorded poems are interspersed with fragments of an interview that nicely breaks the intensity otherwise present in listening to an hour-long sequence of poetry. The sound quality is superb too.

And finally, do explore the Cyclops Press catalogue ( www.cyclopspress.com ) where they have other poetry CD gems. Al Purdy is one of those gems.

©paulodacosta

©paulodacosta