Piercing and penetrating… A deceptively simple and deep collection.
Gutteridge examines boyhood, love, longing, memories, morality, and life’s small delights and sorrows in this powerful collection. Mostly set in Gutteridge’s hometown, these poems are grounded in the reality of the image, placing the reader in the age-old setting: “When summer storms rolled in/ unthrottled from the throat/ of our Great Lake, we dashed/ outdoors, bathing-suited/ and bare of foot, squelching/ the saturate grass, paying/ no heed to the rain’s rage.” His descriptions of various places are as strong as his portrayal of people and emotion: “Long before you could read/ a word or tell a Jedi/ from a gerbil, you could/ recite the opening spiel/ from Star Wars, as if/ you had written it yourself.” In “POP,” Gutteridge examines the devastation of the Second World War; the ways it touches the lives of families; the heavy cloud it cast over the lives of wives and children left behind after fathers were drafted: “The War and its faraway/ horrors hollowed out/ the fathers of my town, and the only/ young men I noticed/ had flat feet, a newly minted/ limp or horn-rimmed/ glasses an inch thick.” Most moving are his reflections on loss and grief, as in “ENOUGH,” written in memory of his grandson Tom: “My grief has broken out again/ like a burst boil, its pain/ like a bud too blooded/ to bloom, and I know/ we all love at our peril/ and loss is the price we pay/ for bidding our soul be severed/ and bound to another’s, for daring/ the gods at their own ado,/ but still, we relish the roil/ of such intimate collisions,/ such transfusions of touch,/ and so it is, I stoke/ the coals of what remains/ of the love we shared, that soared/ sunward, above the buffering/ stars – and that is enough.” This short collection of poems is deceptively impactful, captivating the reader with its candor and emotional depth.
A GROUND MORE ARABLE
New Poems
Don Gutteridge
Coming soon
