In this Book
- Chamber Music: The Poetry of Jan Zwicky
- Book
- 2015
- Published by: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
- Series: Laurier Poetry
summary
Arcing across thirty years and seven volumes, Jan Zwicky’s poetry has always been acutely musical (and sensitive to the silence out of which music comes). In the compositions in Chamber Music, the first anthology of Zwicky’s poems, one may perceive the attunement of her vocations: poet, philosopher, violinist. Her poetry both praises and relinquishes the earth, bearing witness to the fierce skies of the prairies and the freezing rain of the West Coast. Enacting the virtue of clarity prized and defended by her explicitly philosophical work, this poetry is both resonant and integrated. It is also formally diverse, ranging from the singular focus of the lyric ode to suites of variations and fugal structures, from polyphonic textures to the sprawling reach of narrative gestures. Throughout, one feels the deft hand of an adept using powerful metaphors to explore themes of colonial violence, environmental devastation, spiritual catastrophe, and transformation.
Resisting Western philosophy’s exclusion of imagination from civic life, Zwicky’s poetry is noteworthy for the tension it achieves between the abstract and the personal, the general and the particular. Meditating repeatedly on themes of love and grief, this poetry is at once passionately committed to the lucidity of its utterances and the fidelity of its images.
Resisting Western philosophy’s exclusion of imagination from civic life, Zwicky’s poetry is noteworthy for the tension it achieves between the abstract and the personal, the general and the particular. Meditating repeatedly on themes of love and grief, this poetry is at once passionately committed to the lucidity of its utterances and the fidelity of its images.
Table of Contents
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- Title Page, Copyright Page
- pp. i-iv
- Table of Contents
- pp. v-vi
- Biographical Note
- pp. ix-x
- Introduction
- pp. xi-xx
- Practising Bach
- pp. 1-2
- Language Is Hands
- pp. 3-4
- from Leaving Home
- pp. 5-8
- from Seven Elegies: Robert William Zwicky (1927–1987)
- The Horse Pull
- p. 9
- K. 219, Adagio
- p. 11
- The Geology of Norway
- pp. 12-15
- Cashion Bridge
- pp. 17-23
- Beethoven: Op. 95
- pp. 25-29
- Driving Northwest
- p. 30
- Epistemology
- p. 32
- One Version
- p. 33
- Robinson’s Crossing
- pp. 34-38
- Another Version
- p. 40
- Small song: Prairie
- p. 44
- Small song: Mozart
- p. 46
- Small song: Laundry
- p. 47
- Late Schubert
- p. 50
- Practising Bach
- pp. 51-54
- If There Were Two Rivers
- pp. 56-57
- From Distant Lands
- p. 58
- The Art of Fugue
- pp. 59-63
- Schumann: Fantasie, Op. 17
- pp. 64-65
- Autobiography
- p. 66
- Autumn Again
- pp. 67-68
- Acknowledgements
- pp. 79-82
Additional Information
ISBN
9781771120920
Related ISBN(s)
9781771120913, 9781771121088
MARC Record
OCLC
885913454
Pages
102
Launched on MUSE
2017-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No
Copyright
2015