Purity of Absence

By Dave Margoshes

In Purity of Absence, Dave Margoshes explores love in its waxing and waning, the extravagance of its fullness, the agony of its departure. Like an explorer charting new territory, he casts his eye on the rhythms and syntax of love, observing its aspects both quotidian and rare. The poems in this new collection, Margoshes’s first in a decade, chart the ekg patterns of love, not just the mature love between a man and a woman but love for a parent, friends, knowledge, place and, ultimately, life itself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dundurn
• Release date: Apr 16, 2001
• ISBN: 9781770706729

Dave Margoshes

Dave Margoshes is a poet and fiction writer. Most of his adult life has been spent in western Canada, for 35 years, in Saskatchewan. He began his writing life as a journalist, working as a reporter and editor on a number of daily newspapers in the U.S. and Canada, and has taught journalism ​and creative writing​. He has published twenty books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. His work has appeared widely in literary magazines and anthologies, in Canada and beyond, including six times in the Best Canadian Stories volumes; he’s been nominated for the Journey Prize​ several times and was a finalist in 2009. His novel Bix’s Trumpet and Other Stories won two prizes at the 2007 Saskatchewan Book Awards, including Book of the Year. His collection of linked short stories A Book of Great Worth, was named one of Amazon.ca’s Top Hundred Books of 2012. Other prizes include the City of Regina Writing Award, twice; the Stephen Leacock Prize for Poetry in 1996 and the John V. Hicks Award for fiction in 2001. In 2022 he was the recipient of the Lieutenant Governor’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Dave lives on an acreage near Saskatoon.

Book preview

Purity of Absence

Purity of Absence

poems by

Dave Margoshes

Porcepic Books

an imprint of

FM_f001

Beach Holme Publishing

Vancouver

Copyright © 2001 by Dave Margoshes

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 CANCOPY (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency), Toronto, Ontario.

This book is published by Beach Holme Publishing, 226-2040 West 12th Avenue, Vancouver, B.C. V6J 2G2. www.beachholme.bc.ca. This is a Porcepic Book.

FM_f002

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

Production and Design: Jen Hamilton

Cover Art: Red Hue Moon by Christine Lynn, acrylic on canvas, copyright © 2000.

Licence granted by Canadian Artists Representation Copyright Collective.

Author Photograph: Myek O’Shea

Printed and bound in Canada by Marc Veilleux Imprimeur

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

Margoshes, Dave, 1941-

Purity of absence

Poems.

A Porcepic book.

ISBN 0-88878-419-8

I. Title.

PS8576.A647P87 2001                         C811’.54                         C2001-910123-6

PR9199.3.M354P87 2001

For Ilya, as always

Contents

Acknowledgements

God’s Tears

The Perfect Moment

Strikes Often

Eat Their Own

The Cruel Air

4H

Balancing Act

Mullin’s

DST

Little Caesar on TV

Deadman’s Eyes

Upright

Game 6, World Series, Bottom of the 10th, 2 Outs

Changed Title

Seeing the Future

Forked Tongue

The Persistent Suitor

Pride of Flesh

Eat Book

Perseid

The Marriage Bed

The Sound of My Voice

Silver Anniversary

By Canoe to Loon Lake

Going South for the Winter

Thirty-Five Below

The Door

Taking Heart

Smoke

Learning to Breathe

Breaking the Silence

The Marriage Bed

Saskatoons

Uncharted

Anatomy

Snow

The Waking

Okanagan

Distances

Purity of Absence

A New Nightgown

The Recorder

A Bird in the House

The Satisfaction of Knowing

The Satisfaction of Knowing

Old Wives’ Tales

Astrophysics

After Winnipeg

The Radio

Adam’s Rib

The World by the Tail

Bronx Cheer

The Porcupine

A Painting of Elvis

The Dark

Deer, Bowen Island

Thicker Than Water

On the Beach

The Rutabaga

Hard Rain Falling

April Fool

Summer Solstice

The Retreat

Mad Cow Disease

Wedding Gifts

Martin and Lewis

Ten²

Man in the Moon

Consider the Spider

Mothers and Daughters

Rat-Free Province

Poem for a Reading in a Bar

Out of Chaos, Order

Latimer’s Statement to the Police

Radio Silence

Twins

Dec. 6, Montreal

The Spreiser

Saving Souls

Leave Wife

Skin of Our Teeth

Baghdad

Faith, Hope, Charity

Ghosts and Poets at Batoche

The Immense Noise

Fathers

That Summer

Radio Silence

Twenty-Fifth Reunion

Community

Barium Moon

A Warm February

Acknowledgements

Many of the poems in this collection have appeared, often in earlier versions, in the following magazines and anthologies: Ariel, Border Crossings, Canadian Forum, Canadian Literature, CV2, Cross-Canada Writers Quarterly, Dalhousie Review, Dandelion, diverge, Fiddlehead, Grain, League of Canadian Poets’ Museletter, NeWest Review, Poetry Canada Review, Pottersfield Portfolio, Prairie Fire, Queen’s Quarterly, Textual Studies in Canada, This Magazine, Towards 2000 (Fifth House Publishers), Vallum, Vintage 1991 (Sono Nis Press), and Windsor Review.

Some poems were broadcast on the CBC programs Ambience and Gallery.

The Persistent Suitor won the Stephen Leacock Poetry Award from the Orillia International Poetry Festival in 1996. On the Beach won second prize in the 1997 Saltwater Poetry Contest. Dec. 6, Montreal won second prize in the League of Canadian Poets’ 1991 National Poetry Contest.

My thanks to the editors, producers, and judges.

Thanks also to the Saskatchewan Writers Guild’s colony committee, which operates writers and artists colonies at Emma Lake and St. Peter’s Abbey, Muenster, Saskatchewan, where many of these poems were written.

And especial thanks to Christine Lynn for Red Hue Moon, the painting on the cover.

And more thanks to George Amabile, whose lines the purity of absence/kindles appetites that hiss/and fuse. One/last beginning, from his poem Tangents and Vectors, are used, with permission, as an epigraph for my poem Purity of Absence. I heard George read his poem at Heaven bookshop in Winnipeg in spring 1996 and, struck by that phrase the purity of absence, immediately began my poem on the back of a napkin.

God’s Tears

The Perfect Moment

for Shaya

The farther you go

the closer you come

to every thing

you always thought

was out of your reach,

the perfect breathless moment

crystallizing,

evaporating.

This is the way

the world turns

itself inside out

of the way

beyond anything

you could imagine

the rising star

shaking off night

into the mouth

of a jealous sun

the rising star

casting its light

into the shining

eyes of the beholder

your light

illuminating something

we’ve never seen before.

Strikes Often

Men are struck by lightning five times as often as women.

—Newspaper Item

Taller, of course,

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