Blue Sonoma

By Jane Munro

Winner 2015 Griffin Poetry Prize

In Blue Sonoma, award-winning poet Jane Munro draws on her well-honed talents to address what Eliot called "the gifts reserved for age." A beloved partner’s crossing into Alzheimer’s is at the heart of this book, and his "battered blue Sonoma" is an evocation of numerous other crossings: between empirical reportage and meditative apprehension, dreaming and wakefulness, Eastern and Western poetic traditions. Rich in both pathos and sharp shards of insight, Munro's wisdom here is deeply embedded, shot through with moments of wit and candour. In the tradition of Taoist poets like Wang Wei and Po-Chu-i, her sixth and best book opens a wide poetic space, and renders difficult conditions with the lightest of touches.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brick Books
• Release date: May 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781771313674

Jane Munro

Jane Munro is the author of five previous books of poetry. Her work has received the Bliss Carman Poetry Award and the Macmillan Prize for Poetry, and was nominated for the Pat Lowther Award. She is a member of Yoko's Dogs, a poetry collective whose first book, Whisk, appeared in 2013. She lives in Vancouver.

Book preview

Blue Sonoma

Jane Munro

Brick Books

Om

purnamadah purnamidam

purnat purnamudachyate

purnasya purnamadaya

purnameva vashishyate

Om shanti, shanti, shanti

All this is full. All that is full.

From fullness, fullness comes.

When fullness is taken from fullness,

Fullness still remains.

    Invocation to the Isha Upanishad

Contents

Sonoma

DARKLING

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

DREAM POEMS

The net of heaven is cast wide

There is a frog

Grenade with its red pin

I was on a bus

His upper arms are marked

In a small boat off Port Renfrew

Moonlight falls between the trees

He stops her on the trail

A poet is walking the platform

The boat that was not a boat

It was a dry-weave hiker’s undershirt

A pool clear as tea

OLD MAN VACANAS

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

SUTRA

The live arbutus carries dead branches

In the drift towards sleep, a green face

Beauty the mediating principle, the moon said

The house is dark

A small doll nested in hollow dolls

My mind is my grandchild

Lao Tzu also has the meaning of old man

Hard to find space

So you come

Mine me

In the slow spin of stars, a dancer turns

Valley of the Moon

Notes

Acknowledgements

About the Author