Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Whole Elephant
    The Whole Elephant
    The Whole Elephant
    Ebook93 pages33 minutes

    The Whole Elephant

    By Marlene Cookshaw

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Shortlisted for the 1990 Dorothy Livesay Award for Poetry (BC Book Prizes)

    Marlene Cookshaw is a Cheshire cat of a poet whose naturally realized details illuminate a shifting wholeness on the "singing edge" between dream and waking. Hers is a quilted language at once covering and revealing our fascinating ordinariness. The long poem "In The Swim" subtly captures the desperate and humourous beauty of a seemingly plain life closely observed. Other poems leap with deftness and daring across the open plain of our lives, leaving images so strong, so strange, they verge on myth.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrick Books
    Release dateOct 15, 1989
    ISBN9781771312738
    The Whole Elephant
    Author

    Marlene Cookshaw

    Marlene Cookshaw was born and raised in southern Alberta and now lives on Pender Island, BC. She edits The Malahat Review, and teaches at the Victoria School of Writing. She has served on juries for various writing awards, among them the BC Book Prize for Poetry and the Prince Edward Island Literary Competition. Marlene is the author of three earlier books of poetry, two of which, The Whole Elephant (1989) and Double Somersaults (1999), were published by Brick Books.

    Read more from Marlene Cookshaw

    Related to The Whole Elephant

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      It’s Come to This

      Sep 1, 2021

      It’s Come to This
      16 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jul 1, 2023

      Jester-necked pile of ideasfattening by the cutting board.I have known the summer wall,it says slowly. The hillside facessouth into the valley.Dew on the tomato plants.Anything that grows, swarms,bunches itself against a stayand cannot stay. The vine

      4 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Nov 1, 2020

      The American linden sways nonplussed by the storm,a bounce here, a shimmy there, just shaking like musicleft over from the night’s end wafting into the avenues before sleep.I remember once walking down Clinton Street, and singingthat line returning,

      4 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      May 1, 2023

      Great One, Maker, Weaver of Things, I want to undress the tree to find you hidden there in the layers of sapwood, as you were hidden in a mango I ate today, its sweet and buttery flesh. A fly entered the house through the front door. Was that you? At

      3 min read

    • Article

      Cul-de-Sac

      Dec 1, 2021

      That old rage for order: how my father drove a square mouthed mower over-and-back, over-and-back, each row of neatly trimmed grass cut just like he told his barber: boy’s short, regular. O pioneer, taming this joke bit of prairie, no bindweed or dog

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Beyoğlu Municipality Waste Management Orchestra

      Jun 8, 2021

      Selim the half-wit hoarded everything—that was the story they told me my first day in waste management. Selim had lost his wife, and I guess everyone figured he took up hoarding as a way to fill the void. It started out with stuff his wife might have

      24 min read

    • Article

      THE HOUSE with the BLUE DOOR

      May 7, 2020

      THE HOUSE with the BLUE DOOR
      6 min read

    • Article

      Home

      Feb 25, 2019

      I once lived in a yellow little house. Each morning, birds convened and sang at my bedroom window. The gate was indigo and inside the garden all kinds of flowers rose to kiss the sunny walls. The yellow nest was filled with cherished books, colourful

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Coming Of The Tempest

      Sep 22, 2022

      The Coming Of The Tempest
      9 min read

    • Article

      Ghost Girl, Banana

      Aug 21, 2023

      By the time I was 25, there were only two things I remembered about Mumma. The first was that she smelled of watermelons, the second was that we were happy. We’d taken our father’s name of course, but a name is only half a story. The other half exist

      6 min read

    • Article

      Come Stay

      Jan 16, 2024

      Come Stay
      23 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Sep 1, 2022

      I whooshedthrough the party. I grewa set of invisible hands. I was flower girlto the Commonwealth where lovers danced a dancecalled the snowdrift. Sugar mapleshelicoptered samarasin my glass. The dogs slackenedin their webs of shade. A democracyof cl

      2 min read

    • Article

      Intimate Quarters

      Jan 29, 2018

      WORDS CLAIRE BISSEKER FOR AS LONG AS I CAN REMEMBER I HAVE LOVED CABINES, FROM MOSSY GARDEN SHEDS AND GREENHOUSES TO BEACH SHACKS AND VERDANT TREE HOUSES.The closest I’ve come to owning one was the grandly named “summerhouse” I lounged in as a child

      3 min read

    • Article

      Selkie

      Feb 3, 2022

      Selkie
      10 min read

    • Article

      Poetry

      Jun 1, 2021

      Poetry
      3 min read

    • Article

      Crawling Around In The Dark

      Dec 1, 2023

      Crawling Around In The Dark
      4 min read

    • Article

      Six Sonnets

      Jan 1, 2021

      Goldenrod, I could say, you know, everybody wants somethingfrom me, but, well, everybody wants something and nobody wantsnothing from me, goldenrod, towhead, beast. Goldenrod, you packthe meadows like gold-plated sardines. I have heart palpitationsbu

      3 min read

    • Article

      People Are Strange

      Oct 13, 2019

      People Are Strange
      5 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems by Joseph Brodsky

      May 12, 2020

      Two Poems by Joseph Brodsky
      7 min read

    • Article

      A Symposium on Loss

      Mar 1, 2023

      A Symposium on Loss
      30 min read

    • Article

      Summer Beach Reads

      Jan 10, 2021

      Summer Beach Reads
      7 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Mar 1, 2022

      Early such darkness, these oncoming nights& sure, I’m dull & even slow to concedehow mornings make equal, swerving measuresthere between those foremost shadowsalong the fence, amid the chickens & nerve,sheep & their indifference to any pair of foolsh

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Whole Elephant

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Whole Elephant - Marlene Cookshaw

      THE WHOLE

      ELEPHANT

      THE WHOLE

      ELEPHANT

      MARLENE COOKSHAW

      BRICK BOOKS • COLDSTREAM

      Some of these poems have appeared in Canadian Forum, Canadian Literature, Dandelion, Descant, Event, Fiddlehead, Grain, The Malahat Review, The Mississippi Review, Prairie Fire, Prism internation, Quarry, The Raddle Moon, and Random Thought.

      Cover: Gwen Curry, Porch Light, oil stick on paper, 1989.

      Published with the assistance of the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council.

      © Marlene Cookshaw 1989

      Brick Books

      www.brickbooks.ca

      Box 20081

      431 Boler Road

      London, Ontario

      N6K 4G6

      Canada

      Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

      Cookshaw, Marlene

          The whole elephant

      ISBN 0-919626-44-0

      I. Title.

      PS8555.064W48 1989    C811′.54    C89-090566-5

      PR9199.3.C6W48 1989

      CONTENTS

      None Genuine

      The Grassy Verge

      Hydrangea Is the Word We Cannot Think Of

      Green Plums

      Cupboards

      The Settlement

      Miniota, Manitoba

      Flying Home From the Prairies

      Intricate Play

      What the Air Has Washed Under

      The Whole Elephant

      None Genuine

      43,000 Ducks

      The Queen of Burnaby

      Too Close to Crows

      The 410 Walker Street Blaze

      The Blind Leading

      Ball/bearing

      The Illustrated Box

      Quarter Section

      The Sudden Drop in Temperature

      Roulette

      You Are Lucky

      Coloured Pins

      In the Swim

      Life in the Country

      The Gardener

      Pollen

      Gregory Peck

      The Dream of Two Children

      Mofette

      The Milky Way

      Planted

      That Singing Edge

      Trestle

      Sempre Amove

      NONE GENUINE

      Then it came into the mind of Aubrey Vair with startling clearness, while his ear was being kissed, and with his mouth full of muffin, that life is a singularly complex thing.

      H.G. Wells

      The Grassy Verge

      All this happened as I have said, and

      The next day was Friday.

      When I've finished The T E Lawrence Poems

      and the last spiral of sugared orange peel

      from the paisley tin, M caresses me

      till the sand drifts in the corners

      of my eyes    Where are you, he asks

      I could tell him, In a ruined arena whose stone

      curve is worn smooth by desire

      for those not here    He enters me

      I'm thinking of ducks and I cannot stop

      giggling    His hand in my tangled hair

      like a webbed foot in kelp

      He says, Nothing humorous in orgasm

      To stop laughing I recall the willow

      that launches itself from the flagged path

      over the gorge water    Years before we met

      I walked hot afternoons along the gorge,

      the long braid a sun-warmed rope against

      my spine    In late afternoon the current

      combs the willow's green tips

      On the shore side its pendulous branches

      have been sheared like Cleopatra's bangs

      a foot clean of the grassy verge

      Thank you, he says, for being willow

      Outside the bedroom window the winter fruit trees

      drip diamonds    From the seed tray to

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1