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    Afloat
    Afloat
    Afloat
    Ebook104 pages40 minutes

    Afloat

    By John Reibetanz

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Afloat, John Reibetanz's eighth collection of poetry, focuses on water in many manifestations. The centerpiece, a sequence on the Three Gorges Dam and its cultural and environmental implications, brings ancient Chinese sources (Meng Chiao and the painter Dong Yuan) together with modern ones (Edward Burtynsky's photographs and violent video games) to create an elegy that is moving and meditative.
    Although water is everywhere present as a subject, it is song that provides the motivating power, the vehicle of longing that animates the book. "We thirst for song"—the closing words of the Lament for the Gorges sequence—could really serve as the book's epigraph. This is poetry exercising its full range of possible functions (to observe, to enquire, to elegize, to imagine, to think, to commemorate, to yearn and to feel), all in the service of that "thirst for song."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrick Books
    Release dateFeb 6, 2015
    ISBN9781771313919
    Afloat
    Author

    John Reibetanz

    John Reibetanz is the author of eleven previous collections of poetry, and his poems have appeared in such magazines as Poetry (Chicago), The Paris Review, The Walrus, and Canadian Literature. A finalist for the National Magazine Awards, the National Poetry Competition, and the ReLit Award, John has given readings in major cities all across Canada. He lives in Toronto and is a Senior Fellow at Massey College and a Fellow of Victoria College, where he received the first Victoria University Teaching Award. The Essential John Reibetanz, edited by Jeffery Donaldson, was published by The Porcupine’s Quill in 2017.

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      Book preview

      Afloat - John Reibetanz

      AFLOAT

      AFLOAT

      JOHN REIBETANZ

      Brick Books

      Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

      Reibetanz, John

      Afloat / John Reibetanz.

      Poems.

      Issued in print and electronic formats.

      ISBN 978-1-771313-91-9

      I. Title.

      PS8585.E448A35 2013      C811'54     C2013-900060-7

      copyright © John Reibetanz, 2013

      We acknowledge the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, and the Ontario Arts Council for their support of our publishing program.

      The author photo was taken by Timothy Reibetanz.

      The print edition of the book is set in Minion Pro, designed by Robert Slimbach and released in 1990 by Adobe Systems.

      The cover image is a detail from River and Mountains by Amy K. Epstein.

      Brick Books

      431 Boler Road, Box 20081

      London, Ontario N6K 4G6

      www.brickbooks.ca

      To Julie,

      the song’s source

      ABOUT THIS BOOK

      A masterful poet extends his range, bringing both his agile intelligence and musical acuity into play.

      Afloat, John Reibetanz’s eighth collection of poetry, focuses on water in many manifestations. The centerpiece, a sequence on the Three Gorges Dam and its cultural and environmental implications, brings ancient Chinese sources (Meng Chiao and the painter Dong Yuan) together with modern ones (Edward Burtynsky’s photographs and violent video games) to create an elegy that is moving and meditative.

      Although water is everywhere present as a subject, it is song that provides the motivating power, the vehicle of longing that animates the book. We thirst for song—the closing words of the Lament for the Gorges sequence—could really serve as the book’s epigraph. This is poetry exercising its full range of possible functions (to observe, to enquire, to elegize, to imagine, to think, to commemorate, to yearn and to feel), all in the service of that thirst for song.

      CONTENTS

      I

      WATERBORNE

      The Love of Water

      Into Rivers

      Floater

      Water Muses

      The Muse’s Home

      Shore House

      The Vineyard

      Corner Brook Nfld.

      Luca della Robbia’s Singing Gallery

      To Darwin in Chile, 1835

      Glaciologist

      Narwhal

      Redbird Reef

      Launched

      Water and Clay

      Strange Wonders, Uncertain Sources

      II

      LAMENTS OF THE GORGES

      Riverbank

      Displacement

      Peaches

      Another River

      Liudong Renkou

      Wash

      Dragon

      A Reversal

      Reclamation: The Concert

      III

      AIRBORNE

      Soundings

      Sunthreads

      Inca Skull

      Late Autumn Reflection on the Tree outside My Study Window

      Heavenly Upness

      Arise and Stay

      Planetary Evolution

      Diminuendo on the Theme of Whether Shakespeare’s Monument Bears His True Likeness

      Bluegrass

      Two Old Men Are Four Birds

      The Angels of Winter

      Oz: A Tribute to Gerda Taro

      The Monarch Butterfly Migration, 1943

      The Kite Flyer, Nottawasaga Bay

      Curious George Takes Flight, 12 June 1940

      A Chinese River in Brooklyn

      Airborne

      NOTES

      ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

      BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

      I

      WATERBORNE

      THE LOVE OF WATER

      All nature, from the crag windbreakered in granite

      that melts into the nuzzling of the clouds’ wet snouts,

      to the motes of grit that rise up every morning

      and dance in a fountain over the windowsill,

      all nature wants to be water. Curled tongues of fire

      and sharp tongues of wind stutter and lisp through forests,

      longing for the fluency of streams. Clays

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