{"product_id":"first-9781771315425","title":"First","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eSHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 CITY OF VICTORIA BUTLER BOOK PRIZE\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eGovernor General's Award-winning poet Arleen Paré combines the story of two first best friends with questions of the mystery of cosmic first cause.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe poems in \u003ci\u003eFirst\u003c\/i\u003e, Arleen Paré's seventh collection, search for a long-lost first friend. They conjure the subtle layers of meaning in that early friendship to riff on to a search for how we might possibly understand the primal First: the beginnings of the cosmos that contains our own particular lives, beginnings and longings.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis layered evocation of the past—of childhood in 1950s Dorval, \"a green mesh of girls friendships and fights\"—and the intensity of the desire to know, give \u003ci\u003eFirst\u003c\/i\u003e its haunting beauty. \"[T]he word though old fashioned,\" Paré writes, \"is \u003ci\u003ewhence \u003c\/i\u003e...unconditioned origins\" when \"\u003ci\u003eno worthy question is ever answered on the same plane that it was asked\u003c\/i\u003e; how to frame the question not knowing the plane on which I must ask it.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Arleen Paré","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48278410166523,"sku":"9781771315425","price":19.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0779\/3917\/9771\/files\/9781771315425.jpg?v=1772486318","url":"https:\/\/indiepubs.com\/products\/first-9781771315425","provider":"IndiePubs","version":"1.0","type":"link"}