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Too much themselves to need the sun
as prototype, they're sopranos to our sight,
feeding off the slightest, most staggered
slivers of light. We wouldn't need
much more to believe yellow specks,
blown afield, dust with microscopic dust
the willet's wings, the dog's paw, the man's beard.
--from The Colours at McCormack's Beach
Brian Bartlett's poems, both pithy and expansive, bridge nature and human society, humour and elegy. Ranging from Buster Keaton films to a miniature Taj Mahal, from a celebration of sloths to an ironic look at the new millennium, from an urban garden to a ferry at sea, these poems tell stories and sing, question and praise.
On The Afterlife of Trees: "Trees are 'utterly themselves,' Brian Bartlett writes in the title poem of The Afterlife of Trees, and the same could be said of the poet himself, whose textured, learned poems are full of keen observation and deep reverence for the natural world. 'The star-jammed / blackness nearly threw me on my back,' he says in another poem. It is a great pleasure to see that sky, and the world beneath it, through Bartlett's eyes." Carole Glasser Langille, author of In Cannon Cave ----- On Granite Erratics: "For a number of years, and without fanfare, Brian Bartlett has been quietly providing us with some of our best poetry ... No series of review quotations can do justice to the density and nuance, the lush foliation of Bartlett's diction ... This is poetry that is thick and suggestive; its rhythm both subtle and sinewy." Ross Leckie, author of The Authority of Roses ----- "Bartlett's poetry has granite strength and texture and something of an ammonite about it - a sense of connection with history and continuity. There is a tenderness to his poems too which makes them very moving. I find them a constant delight." Barbara Colebrook Peace, author of Kyrie