Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    A Possible Landscape
    A Possible Landscape
    A Possible Landscape
    Ebook62 pages16 minutes

    A Possible Landscape

    By Maureen Harris

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Maureen Harris’s first volume of poetry evokes “a possible landscape,” where the stories that subtly shape us blend with the moments that we are. Here is an Eden where Eve longs for the serpent’s “green quiver,” his “sibilant caress,” where a snake tires of his lover “wearing/the same skin day-out, day-in.” The poems in the first section of this book are sharp new takes on old stories, at once angry, witty and thoughtful. With grace, compassion and sparkle, the rest of the book explores the self in the world of the late twentieth century, the seeming contradictions of the third world, and the ordinary magic of an evening spent with friends.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrick Books
    Release dateSep 15, 1993
    ISBN9781926829579
    A Possible Landscape

    Related to A Possible Landscape

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Jan 1, 2021

      I learned the world through the bottoms of my feet, barein the creeks of summer, stepping on pebbles, the squidgeof moss between my toes. On hot asphalt, the hop and skipover cracks, feet already toughened by bramble, dirt, the pricklyground of pine

      4 min read

    • Article

      from BLACK PASTORAL

      Nov 1, 2023

      somewheres, some lifetimes ago I have run so far, so long.There is nowhere I haven’t beenBut here, in this field, a bodyLength from the ragged brinkThat gives way to forest.I collapsed here, the thin, hard slipOf me whittled at both ends.I want badly

      4 min read

    • Article

      Song Of The Woods

      May 23, 2022

      Song Of The Woods
      7 min read

    • Article

      All This Blood and Love

      Nov 22, 2017

      All This Blood and Love
      6 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Jan 1, 2022

      The painting is of a door, its wood so warpedwith moisture it cannot close. It stays ajar leaving a sliver of light—enough to suggestsomething sweet and almost unreachable behind the door—and you sit in yourroom working on the bills or those comforti

      4 min read

    • Article

      Six Poems

      Feb 28, 2023

      Dear C, At first Virgil’s poem is quite dull; equivocalnames of products at The Container Store: Elfa White Medium Drawer, Mesh NarrowRolling Cart (Medium Solution), Narrow Classic Mesh Box and the number of pirouetting starseach product attained. An

      5 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Sep 1, 2022

      I whooshedthrough the party. I grewa set of invisible hands. I was flower girlto the Commonwealth where lovers danced a dancecalled the snowdrift. Sugar mapleshelicoptered samarasin my glass. The dogs slackenedin their webs of shade. A democracyof cl

      2 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems by Phillip B. Williams

      Dec 15, 2017

      The masters are yet dead. Wanting to be human,I tried to rewrite The Waste Land. The canon’s reachcasts ruinous light. The masters’ pens breachthis page where, above, my own hand spectates. Babylonrisen, exorcism in reverse, whose nature upended now?

      6 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Jan 1, 2020

      How slow is all of this dying? Across the county linea fossil in the making, off-road exhaling last lightin nightmud. A small cat in a steel trap. Pendulous sparrows preen. Holding on for the last bluedark nightwe ate fruited scabs off each other’s m

      4 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      May 1, 2019

      “My arm is so brown and so beautiful,” is a thought I haveas I’m about to turn off the lamp and go to sleep.I look at it a moment in the soft glow, and see it, briefly,as though it belonged to someone else. A reddishkind of brown, like a toasted almo

      7 min read

    • Article

      Death’s Footsteps

      Nov 29, 2017

      Death’s Footsteps
      5 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Mar 1, 2022

      Five Poems
      5 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Nov 1, 2020

      The American linden sways nonplussed by the storm,a bounce here, a shimmy there, just shaking like musicleft over from the night’s end wafting into the avenues before sleep.I remember once walking down Clinton Street, and singingthat line returning,

      4 min read

    • Article

      Same River Twice

      Feb 3, 2022

      Same River Twice
      8 min read

    • Article

      Spell

      Apr 25, 2018

      Spell
      4 min read

    • Article

      TWO ESSAYS from FINGER EXERCISES FOR POETS

      Nov 1, 2022

      Russian Formalists have a word, “ostranenie,” which means constantly attempting to discover new ways of looking at everyday things. There are almost always two realities rubbing up against one another in every poem, whether they are specified or not,

      10 min read

    • Article

      The Broken Mirror

      Sep 2, 2022

      GONE WERE THE CAMPERS and the counselors. Gone were the Civilian Conservation Corps cabins. Gone were the horses and the corral, the mess hall and the bathhouse. Tall grass and brambles grew in the field between the mountain and the river. Only the m

      3 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jul 1, 2023

      Jester-necked pile of ideasfattening by the cutting board.I have known the summer wall,it says slowly. The hillside facessouth into the valley.Dew on the tomato plants.Anything that grows, swarms,bunches itself against a stayand cannot stay. The vine

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Eternal Adventure

      Jun 29, 2021

      The Eternal Adventure
      4 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Jul 1, 2020

      I look to the tree line & already the leavesare ripping themselves away from their mothers. It is only August but I am already rising earlyfor a crisp moon, smoking in the rare chill of a shaded patio. My breasts have begun pickling,the fat rounds pr

      2 min read

    • Article

      Dark Tales

      Dec 2, 2021

      Dark Tales
      6 min read

    • Article

      Nick Laird

      Dec 15, 2017

      I was trying to write like an adult.I had children.I was at the end of something. As I waited at my table by the window for the coffee,I saw that the sirocco had depositeda scrim of dust on the sill overnight,and it was the dark red of powdered blood

      3 min read

    • Article

      Triangle of Light

      Aug 25, 2022

      Triangle of Light
      10 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Sep 1, 2022

      1. Here there’s no rainy season.Sun scalds my forehead,yet the pool is empty. Beside it,a toppled table, its glass surface shattered.The asphalt is too hot for bare feet. 2. Far away: white hillocksand white dunes under a deepblue sky. Swirling winds

      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for A Possible Landscape

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      A Possible Landscape - Maureen Harris

      A Possible Landscape

      A Possible Landscape

      MAUREEN    HARRIS

      Brick Books

      CANADIAN CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA

      Harris, Maureen, 1943—

      A possible landscape

      Poems.

      ISBN 0-919626-67-X

      1. Title.

      PS8565.A77P6 1993     c811’.54     C93-095175-1

      PR9I99.H37P6 1993

      Copyright © Maureen Harris, 1993.

      Third printing, June 2006.

      We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing programme. The support of the Ontario Arts Council is also gratefully acknowledged.

      Cover art is ‘Black Jug in Studio Window,’ by Josephine Wren, oil on paper.

      Typeset in Ehrhardt. The stock is acid-free Zephyr Antique laid.

      Printed and bound by The Coach House Printing Co.

      Brick Books

      431 Boler Road, Box 20081

      London, Ontario

      N6K 4G6

      www.brickbooks.ca

      Thanks to those whose belief in it helped create this book. Particularly implicated are: Lynda Lange, Joe Rosenblatt, Rhea Tregebov, Pat Kennedy, Beverly Clarkson, Peter, Jessica, and Katharine Harris. A special thanks to Marnie Parsons and Sheila Deane, editors extraordinaire, who in more than one instance spied the poem I was trying to write lurking within the one I’d put down on the page.

      This one’s for Lynda

      CONTENTS

      At the Edge of Winter

      A Narrow Room

      Invocation

      That Strange Sense of Falling

      Eve Again

      The Garden

      Let Me

      Snick Snick

      Snake in the Grass

      The Mother of Us All

      Some Snakes Travel in Pairs

      Personals

      A Narrow Room

      The Frog Prince Revisited

      Brooch

      The Wicked Queen’s Story

      Persephone’s Dream

      Alice

      Hermes

      Where Things Come Together

      Where Things Come Together

      Crossing the Bar

      The

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1