Words for Trees

In this Ottawa writer’s first volume of verse, there are trees, of coursecatalpas on stained-glass transoms, an ever-present crabappel, nameless species in whose bare branches the winter solstice lurks. There is music, tooa whorehouse tango, a string quartet enthralling a favourite cat, the silky caress of a clarinet along the remembered flesh of adolescence. And visual art, from the Middle Ages through Matisse, is reenacted in vignettes of desire or dereliction.

In this Ottawa writer's first volume of verse, there are trees, of course—catalpas on stained-glass transoms, an ever-present crabappel, nameless species in whose bare branches the winter solstice lurks. There is music, too—a whorehouse tango, a string quartet enthralling a favourite cat, the silky caress of a clarinet along the remembered flesh of adolescence. And visual art, from the Middle Ages through Matisse, is reenacted in vignettes of desire or dereliction.