But for Now

Gordon Johnston

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9780773590083
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Canadian Poetry
• Index: Literature

From "Anna's Lovers"

Our houses glow both from within
and on the outside: their night lights
and an almost perfect
and wintry moon.

The phrase "but for now" means among other things "making do," as if we had to settle for the bare minimum. In But for Now, Gordon Johnston presents poems where the mortal world is more than enough because there is more to it than the merely mortal and where it is possible to hear beyond the outmoded clanking of inherited religious vocabularies.

These poems find moments of grace in chance occurrences and through a wide range of styles and methods, they choreograph the random casual events of our existence. Northrop Frye famously asked, "Where is here?" These poems instead ask, "When is now?"

Engaged with worlds of waiting and of doing, with enduring and healing, But for Now celebrates music and noise, speech and silence, and asserts that for all the darkness at the edges, there is something shining at the centre of the painting.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• THE HUGH MACLENNAN POETRY SERIES
• Copyright
• UNTIL THEN
• DREAM GRAVITY
• OF INTEREST
• THE RIVERS OF GOD ARE FULL OF WATER
• WHAT I HAVE, WHAT I AM, WHAT I DO
• VISITING POET
• LIQUOR CONTROL ON CUMBERLAND STREET
• SPEAKING VOLUMES
• SAFELY HOME
• HARBOURED
• THE DETROIT INSTITUTE OF ART, AT NIGHT, AFTER THE ATTACKS OF 9/11
• POEM IN WHICH A GENTLEMAN IS WASHING HIS HANDS, IN A FAR ROOM
• IL MARRONE MONDO
• TO GIVERNY
• THE WORKERS
• AGREEABLE NOISE
• BEESONG
• THE NOISY ONES
• BIRD BRAINS
• TWO GULLS, HIGH ABOVE, AT NOON
• PIANISSIMO
• THE BACH SUITE
• PRACTICAL ORDER ON ROAD 110 SOUTH NEAR STRATFORD
• VARIANCE ON ROAD 110 NORTH NEAR STRATFORD
• PLENITUDE AND CONFORMITY, IN THE LEASIDE LONGO’S
• SIDETRACKED, AT CHARNY
• MINOR APOCALYPTICS AT HOME
• A NEW PSALM, OF ACCURATE PRAISE
• A NEW PSALM, OF UNCERTAINTY
• A NEW PSALM, OF VAULTING
• A NEW PSALM, IN A DEEP PIT
• A NEW PSALM, OF UNKNOWN IRONIES
• A NEW PSALM, OF THE OBOIST
• A NEW PSALM, OF STRANGENESS
• HARD PLACE
• HABEAS CORPUS
• AN END OF READING
• CREDO
• POPE INNOCENT’S HOLIDAY IN SUBIACO, AUGUST 1202
• BORN WRONG IN HOLY WEEK
• END
• SHRINE
• CAGED
• MESSE
• STAY
• NOSTALGIA
• THE WALT WHITMAN PROJECT
• ANNA’S LOVERS
• CEDARSMELL: AL PURDY
• FURNITURE
• SWEET ONE HUNDREDS
• YOUR HANDS, YOUR EYES
• WITH ONE OF A SET OF DUELLING PISTOLS
• THE SHAPE OF DUST
• FINALLY THE END OF POETRY
• NOTES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS