A reflection on love, life, childhood memories, nostalgia that is at once intimate and timely…
Shaped by mist and nostalgia, the timely and engrossing latest collection from Gutteridge addresses questions of love, life, friendship, familial ties, and mortality while delving into memories of the past. From telling the story of the boys putting on a home-grown circus in “Warp,” to his immediate bonding with a new boy in grade four in “Jack,” to contemplating the time spent with old love in “Blissful Wishing” and “Debonaire,” to narrating the hilarious incident with the local Reverend in the sarcastic title poem, “Kingdom Come,” to mulling over the set ways of his small Canadian town, and to describing how his love for poetry helps keep him going––“When I can no longer compose/ poems to keep my soul/ alive, when my muse has become/ unenthused, like a rose/ in limpid light, when my last/ simile has sung itself out,/ and I have just enough breath/ to breathe a metaphor that might/ uplift or move, I’ll say/ goodbye to loping tropes/ and rhyming schemes, put down/ my peregrine pen, and drift/ like a dream to my death.”—Gutteridge writes with profound self-awareness and melancholic sorrow, spinning experience into meditations on the meaning of life, happiness, and friendship. Readers aching for poetry of nostalgic old days will embrace this deeply touching book.
Kingdom Come and Other Poems
Don Gutteridge
Coming soon