I left nothing inside on purpose
CBC Books | | Posted: July 4, 2019 3:35 PM | Last Updated: July 8, 2019
Stevie Howell
Poems of stringent aesthetic demands and volcanic emotional release make up Stevie Howell's wondrous I left nothing inside on purpose. These poems — bewildering in their linguistic beauty — verge on prayer in their intense plea to be truly seen by another, a sort of devotional sequence addressing the psychological construct of attachment. Can we change? Has anyone ever changed? Does it matter? Lives marred by injury and violence, both physical and psychic, emerge in the book as meditations on trust, endurance, faith, destruction and love. Howell's voice combines ferocious intimacy and moral rigour with precision and compassion.
The Hawaiian surf, the neuropsychologist's lab, the deliriums of social media, and the recovery room. From geology to theology, lyric pain to the contemplative mind of the quasi-saint, I left nothing inside on purpose is a deeply affecting, glittering analysis of who we are when we claim to be ourselves in the world. (From McClelland & Stewart)
I left nothing inside on purpose won the Raymond Souster Award, a $2,000 prize given to a poetry book by a member of the League of Canadian Poets.
From the book
I was ready early. I was wearing that dress. The wound
would take me somewhere, then deliver me back to the step
& b/c we met I became wound's home, a nest. Home is
the only word, really, if you think about it. Wound is
its synonym. God's first act was the wound, & the 2nd,
& the 3rd. The same 3 acts as true for men. The wound is
formlessness & form. An open hand. A fist. A weapon
someone else's fingers assembled & burnished. W/tools
we invented distance. Distance permits the wound to be
both natural & an accident. I welcomed the wound.
It opened, expanded, I grew. Rooms I grew up in — wounds.
I grew & defended the wound from other girls (jealous
girls) who were desperate to find a wound of their own. Scared
b/c all the good wounds were getting serious. Sometimes,
afterwards, the wound coos in my ear, there, there... & it is
bliss to have welcomed the wound, to no longer be restless.
From I left nothing inside on purpose by Stevie Howell ©2018. Published by McClelland & Stewart.