Words for Trees

By Barbara Folkart

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dundurn
• Release date: Jan 1, 2007
• ISBN: 9781770706293

Barbara Folkart

Barbara Folkart has lived in Germany, France, England, and Italy, worked at the Harvard and Paris Observatories, and received a Ph.D. in medieval French literature. Her poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Arc, The Antigonish Review, Descant, The Malahat Review, Event, and Thumbscrew. Currently she lives in Canada's capital where she teaches translation studies at the University of Ottawa.

Book preview

WORDS FOR TREES

WORDS FOR TREES

poems by

BARBARA FOLKART

Porcepic Books

an imprint of

Beach Holme Publishing

Vancouver

Copyright © 2004 by Barbara Folkart

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency),Toronto, Ontario.

This book is published by Beach Holme Publishing, Suite 1010, 409 Granville Street, Vancouver, British Columbia V6C 1T2, www.beachholme.bc.ca. This is a Porcepic Book.

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts and of the British Columbia Arts Council. The publisher also acknowledges the financial assistance received from the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for its publishing activities.

Editor: Michael Carroll

Design and Production: Jen Hamilton

Cover Art: Sandor (Alex) Szatsko, Untitled

Author Photograph: Philippe Di Stefano

Printed and bound in Canada by BookSurge Canada

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

Folkart, Barbara

          Words for trees/Barbara Folkart.

Poems.

A porcepic book.

ISBN 0-88878-436-8

          I. Title.

PS8561.O44W67 2004      C811’.6      C2002-911091-2

For Nadine McInnis

CONTENTS

I  Songs from the French

Flight into Egypt

Love Song from a Medieval Manuscript

Deux déjeuners sur l’herbe

I. Monet

II. Manet

Two Songs from the French

I. Aubade

II. Living for Love

In the Botanical Gardens of Paris

The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian

The Black Door

Nana and Trick

II  Time Passing Through Gardens and Fields

My Son Opening a Watermelon

June

Bodies of Rain

Time Passing Through Gardens and Fields

Close to the Green New Equinox

In Platt Fields Park

How the Berries Bled

View from the Void

Words for Trees

Birds in the Bare of November

Hive

Tangoing at the Solstice

Grief Work

Rondeau

The Time for Unfolding

Solstitial

Lady of Seven Sorrows

While We Are Old

On the Fringes of Hurricanes

Safe Outside

III  Rhythms and Algorhythms

Soundtrack for Small Tulips

Algorhythms

Cat and String Quartet

Clarinet Flesh

For Unaccompanied Cello

Simple as Twilight

Bruissement

IV  Ce qui ne se retrouve jamais, jamais

For What Can Never Ever Be Refound

Ulrike

Pharaoh’s Daughter

Flesh and Voice

For the Stranger in the Field

The Colour of Time

V  Dreaming Drowning

Tear Water Pooling

Dreaming Drowning

What the Water Tells Your Skin

Les baigneuses I

Les baigneuses II

VI  Lent

Good Friday in Fallowfield

I. Parsifal’s Meadow

II. The Sky’s the Colour of Grace

Purple

Beyond Beyond

Stone Mother

Revelation in Roxbury

Living Like Matisse

Déjà Vu

Ending Empty

Wasting

VII  Easter in the Loire Valley

Ponds Gone Wild

Pagoda at Chanteloup

Souvigny en Touraine

Walled Gardens in Amboise

Aquifers

Easter Waters

VIII  Writing with Light

Per Ardua

Fools

Camera-Body

Writing with Light

Resonance

Gloria

Sursum Corda

Dark Room

IX  Time’s Flesh

L’écorchée vive

Id

Private Eye

Bitch-Poem

Gendering

Time’s Flesh

Un-Building

A Sudden Cold

X  Baudelaire’s Deaths

i. Upstairs, in the Quiet Bordel

ii. All Those Little Deaths

iii. Baudelaire, Prince of Poems

XI  Summer in Fallowfield

Bells

Sunflowers

Authority

Sunday Morning in Fallowfield

Notes

Acknowledgements

I

Songs from the French

Flight into Egypt