The Waking Comes Late
CBC Books | CBC | Posted: March 1, 2017 9:41 PM | Last Updated: July 11, 2017
Steven Heighton
Bestselling author Steven Heighton returns with a collection of laments and celebrations that reflect on our struggle to believe in the future of a world that continues to disappoint us. The poet challenges the boundaries of sleep and even death in these meditations on what lies just beneath the surface of contemporary life. These are poems that trouble over the idea of failure even as they continually recommit to the present moment. This is fierce music performed in a minor key. (From House of Anansi Press)
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From the book
The Turn
- Everyone kept referring to "the turn
in the poem," and it troubled the poet —
she didn't understand. Perhaps, she thought,
in all her life's work there was no such "turn,"
nor in her life itself, which must then mean
her journey was simply a homestretch —
no epic detours, colourful car-wrecks,
no fork-in-the-road crisis where one lane
veered toward a fuller life, off-map.
Well, tough.
Maybe her heart was always unmanic —
shy, but Shaker-steady. Maybe her poems,
like her mind, served more subtle metronomes —
so what? In her life no stirring, cinematic
turns, yet still her words make song enough.
From The Waking Comes Late by Steven Heighton ©2016. Published by House of Anansi Press.