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    This Brighter Prison: A Book of Journeys
    This Brighter Prison: A Book of Journeys
    This Brighter Prison: A Book of Journeys
    Ebook123 pages58 minutes

    This Brighter Prison: A Book of Journeys

    By Karen Connelly

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    About this ebook

    In her first book of poetry since The Small Words in My Body, which won the Pat Lowther Prize for 1990, Karen Connelly writes, in the tradition of the writer-adventurer, of vivid encounters and reflections abroad and at home, continuing her pursuit of "living knowledge of the world." These poems enact journeys of the body and heart with candour and sensuous grace, catching the very texture of human experience in the lithe, muscular lines which have a cat-like metaphorical reach.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrick Books
    Release dateOct 15, 1993
    ISBN9781771312646
    This Brighter Prison: A Book of Journeys
    Author

    Karen Connelly

    Karen Connelly, a native of Calgary, has lived in Thailand, Spain, France and Greece. Her travels are an integral part of her writing. Touch the Dragon, a travel book deriving from her experience in Thailand, won the 1993 Governor General's Award for Non-fiction.

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      Book preview

      This Brighter Prison - Karen Connelly

      This Brighter Prison

      A Book of Journeys

      This Brighter Prison

      A Book of Journeys

      Karen Connelly

      Brick Books

      CANADIAN CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA

      Connelly, Karen, 1969 –

           This brighter prison: a book of journeys

      Poems.

      ISBN 978-1-771312-64-6

      1. Title.

      PS8555.055T5

      1993     c811'.54     C93-093755-4

      PR9199.3.C65T5 1993

      Copyright © Karen Connelly, 1993.

      Fifth printing, June 2000.

      The support of the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council is gratefully acknowledged. The support of the Government of Ontario through the Ministry of Culture and Communications is also gratefully acknowledged.

      Cover painting by Joane Cardinal-Schubert, ‘The Banff Series-Moonlight Sonata: Vision Quest’, acrylic on canvas, 1989. Photographed by John Dean.

      Brick Books

      Box 20081

      431 Boler Road

      London, Ontario

      N6K 4G6

      Canada

      www.brickbooks.ca

      Acknowledgements

      I gratefully acknowledge the former Alberta Foundation for Literary Arts and Alberta Culture, whose financial assistance enabled me to complete this collection.

      I would like to thank the faculty and participants from the 1991 Banff May Studios, especially the late Adele Wiseman, who gave us so much grace. Thanks is also due, as always, to Nancy Holmes, and to Dennis Lee and Don McKay, my editor.

      Some of these poems have appeared in their current or slightly altered forms in the following periodicals and anthologies:

      Books In Canada, Dandelion, Descant, Grain, Guerra Azul (Spain), More Garden Varieties II, Midwest Quarterly (U.S.), New Myths (U.S.), The New Quarterly, Passages, Poetry Canada, Prism International, Secrets from the Orange Couch, Stand (England).

      ‘Amaya’ and ‘Amaya, in spring’ were aired on CBC'S Alberta Anthology.

           For my brothers and sisters,

               Ken, Mara, David, Jen

               and for Scott Gabriel.

      Contents

      Part I: Spanish Lessons

      Spanish Lessons

      The Old Man Presents Himself

      Ana Falls In Love With A Rich Man

      Amaya

      Amaya, in spring

      Would You Trade Your Life To Live There?

      Rat Laughter

      Teeth Of Garlic

      The Ugly Mermaid

      A Song For Lorca

      Isadora and the Basque Photographer

      A Painting For Rachel

      A Bowl Of Yellow Flowers Stains The Canvas

      Part II: Paris Is Not A Dream

      Paris Is Not A Dream

      Jean-Louis, eight years after the Italian girl went away

      The Jeweller In Brazil

      Journal without dates: from Paris to Honfleur to Caen

      Part III: I Kneel To Kiss The Ice

      I Kneel To Kiss The Ice

      She Returns To The Farm

      Animals I Cannot Touch

      This Domain Of Dark Wing

      Living Nowhere

      The Attic Of Paper Dragons

      This Brighter Prison

      No Green Tongue

      Love has nothing to do with closing your eyes

      An Evening Wake, Its Prayer

      Something is burning

      Words Woven From The Sadness Of Evening Trains

      My Photographs Of Madeleine

      The Word Is Absurd

      Part IV: A Grand Place, A Greeting

      A Grand Place, A Greeting

      Sleeping Near The Graveyard

      The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse. This is yielding, not fighting…

      I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. Then even death, where you're going no matter how you live, cannot you part.

      – Annie Dillard

      Spanish Lessons

      For Anayensi Lopez Herraiz

      Spanish Lessons

      Spain takes you in like a masked lover,

           ties you up with a red scarf,

           throws you the ocean's score

           and commands you to sing.

      You are fooled by the grace of a man's hand

           gliding over a woman's bronze neck.

      You are fooled by black eyelashes, amber eyes,

           mouths that smell of chocolate and wine.

      Spain teaches that the body is its own absolute.

      The body is greedy and simple, honest, a hungry child.

      The Mediterranean insists that the mind

           is a snake in the sand,

           turning its sharp tongue in venom.

      In El Greco's city of narrow streets, the sabres

           pierce your eyes to sunsets

           that awe even the gods.

      Through a butterfly dance of bats, the violet sky

                sweeps down to kiss the velvet desert,

                reaches down to kiss your face,

                and stars drop ivory petals of light in your eyes.

      The Old Man Presents Himself

      Suddenly it is cold.

      Green strokes of summer, a dream.

      Burnt gold of fall, a good lie.

      The sea beats its heart on the shore

           as fishermen beat tough octopi.

      Water writhes into my life.

      I must lie still, still, without slipping down.

      Morning, but too cold to rise.

      Tea from the tin–could it scald me to life?

      The kitchen is a great distance from my bed.

      The ceiling drips fine mud over my head.

      Black pools poise to swallow my naked feet.

      Now the Old Man presents himself at the roof

           and begins to eat.

      I hear his mouth tear the tiles.

      I hear his teeth break on the bricks.

      He is crag-boned and blind.

      His bitter sleep is

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