as if

E.D. Blodgett

• Publisher: The University of Alberta Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780888648242
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Canadian Poetry
• Index: Literature

as if there could be no other memory a tree invisible remembering itself In as if, E.D. Blodgett takes readers on journeys of contemplation in which he re-imagines the lyric form. Each line leaves the reader breathless as it runs into the next to form a continuous cycle, a continued breath. The delicate syntax of each piece pushes one forward, ever forward. The poems are Dantesque, leading the traveller through a deeper, darker world. As a collection, as if constitutes an ars poetica of Blodgett's Apostrophes series. The poems explore the elements that make up the series-strict metrical patterns, the possibilities of breath, the endlessness and seamlessness of the spoken word, the incantation.

I

as if by chance a book
had opened on your lap

a book that told of rain
falling and falling on

such small japanese towns
of rain falling through

the pines on ponds and where
the gravel gardens stood

their outlines fading so
that anything that passed

there was soon absorbed
small explosions of

the birds gone without
a trace into the air

and there were pictures in
the book that held within

its pages things that were
so bare they seemed composed

of light and air and trees
that had been honed into

simplicities that were
so ancient that if you

so much as picked them up
you would barely know

what they might have been
so gently do they rest

against your skin their warmth
an embrace that holds

all of you in light
the air of breathing trees

turning the page is not
as simple as it seems

colours begin to fade
where there had been rain

its memory is all
that hangs upon the air

and something stands between
you and where your gaze

turns on the empty sky
and what you thought you might

have seen shimmers before
you all beauty but

a kind of breathing that
takes up and gives away

how can music tell
the edge where silence ends

a colour that appears
of a sudden at

the corners of your eye
as one might pluck a string

in darkness and a sun
of music might spring up

the echo of it all
along horizons of

every living thing
rain and tree and air

whatever they are
they sing themselves in one

I am of colours that
no one can recall

and music fades into
a second silence more

profound than what had come
before without the pitch

of music that might say
what silences had been

unaccountably
the book slips from your lap

and you look up to see
that you are sitting by

a window gazing at
reflections on the glass

unable to discern
where you are among trees

your gaze rising up
upon the glassy air

as smoke over snow
or snow over smoke

and so you have become
a landscape or the way

one remembers them
as they come to mind

so many landscapes all
at once moving through

themselves and now and then
the sea along a beach

where orchards stand beneath
the wind and rising from

the water fish among
their roots rising against

the surface to take the sun
with them out of sight

how can...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Chapter I
• Chapter II
• Chapter III
• About the Author