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| From Canadian Poets, John W. Garvin, ed (Toronto: McClelland, Goodchild & Stewart) |
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| From Jean Blewett's Poems (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1922) |
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07 October 2018
Jean Blewett's 'Thanksgiving Song'
03 October 2018
No Picnic
Murder's No Picnic
E.L. Cushing
London: Wright & Brown, 1956
188 pages
My latest Dusty Bookcase review, of E.L. Cushing's Murder's No Picnic, is now available gratis at the Canadian Notes & Queries website:
A House Full of OrphansI wish I could say I liked the novel. I didn't. Given its cover, I was at the very least expecting a fun read. It wasn't. Regular readers may remember my enjoyment of Murder Without Regret. Now that was fun!
I don't know that I'll read anything more by Cushing. Her books aren't at all common and tend to be quite expensive. My warped copy of Murder's No Picnic was purchased earlier this year £16.00 from an English bookseller located somewhere in Devon. With shipping added, the thing set me back well over fifty dollars. The true first edition was published in 1953 by New York's Arcadia House. There has never been a Canadian edition. I don't expect we'll ever see one.
Not a Ricochet Books candidate.
01 October 2018
Archibald Lampman's 'In October' in October
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| The Poems of Archibald Lampman (Toronto: Musson, 1900) |
IN OCTOBER
Along the waste, a great way off, the pines
Like tall slim priests of storm, stand up and bar
The low long strip of dolorous red that lines
The under west, where wet winds moan afar.
The cornfields all are brown, and brown the meadows
With the blown leaves' wind-heaped traceries,
And the brown thistle stems that cast no shadows,
And bear no bloom for bees.
As slowly earthward leaf by red leaf slips,
The sad trees rustle in chill misery,
A soft strange inner sound of pain-crazed lips,
That move and murmur incoherently;
As if all leaves, that yet have breath, were sighing,
With pale hushed throats, for death is at the door,
So many low soft masses for the dying
Sweet leaves that live no more.
Here I will sit upon this naked stone,
Draw my coat closer with my numbed hands,
And hear the ferns sigh, and the wet woods moan,
And send my heart out to the ashen lands;
And I will ask myself what golden madness,
What balmed breaths of dreamland spicery,
What visions of soft laughter and light sadness
Were sweet last month to me.
The dry dead leaves flit by with thin weird tunes,
Like failing murmurs of some conquered creed,
Graven in mystic markings with strange runes,
That none but stars and biting winds may read;
Here I will wait a little; I am weary,
Not torn with pajn of any lurid hue,
But only still and very gray and dreary,
Sweet sombre lands, like you.
Related post:
28 September 2018
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