Montreal Gazette Review of Ormsby's Time's Covenant

A review of Eric Ormsby's selected poems appeared in the Montreal Gazette in early October, but I only found out about it now. There used to be a time newspapers and journals used to let you know when they were going to review your work; now, unless, they need a photograph or some additional information, the publishers aren't informed at all. So much for professional courtesy.

Nor am I picking on the Gazette: few places bother to let you know of these things. Even the BC Award for Non-fiction did not let us know that Lorna's Cold-cocked had made the longlist. And Zach Wells wife Rachel Lebowitz was shortlisted for the Edna Staebler Award and only found out accidentally after the winner was announced. Why is it that a few quick emails can't be sent, some effort made to let the publishers and writers know at least the same day as the announcement? It seems a very small thing.

The review below is okay. I object to Fagan's assertion that Ormsby's poetry is not for those who want to be made to "feel," whatever that means: there are many powerful poems here which certainly express a wide range of emotions, and can produce many, many feelings in a reader: wonder, awe, sadness, melancholy, love, humour, tenderness. I expect what Fagan means is that these poems are not sentimentally trite or sugar-coated or simplified; that the intellect is engaged as heartily as the emotions. Or at least that's how I choose to take it, as he'd then be right.

I do appreciate the following, though, and feel honoured to have Biblioasis put up there with Gapsereau: Time's Covenant, his new volume of selected poems, has been published by Biblioasis, one of two fairly new houses (the other is Gaspereau Press) specializing in handsome literary productions worth buying simply for the pleasure of owning beautiful objects.

No argument with that, at all.

The review:

Born in Georgia and raised in Florida, Eric Ormsby spent more than two decades in Montreal as director of libraries and a professor of Islamic studies at McGill University. His poems have appeared in the New Yorker and the Paris Review, while his fiercely traditionalist literary opinions are often strongly asserted in the New Criterion's review pages and in a regular literary column for the New York Sun.

Ormsby now lives in London, but he began his career as a poet in Canada, and most of his poetry books (he also publishes scholarly works in the field of Islamic studies) have been published by Canadian presses. Time's Covenant, his new volume of selected poems, has been published by Biblioasis, one of two fairly new houses (the other is Gaspereau Press) specializing in handsome literary productions worth buying simply for the pleasure of owning beautiful objects.

This good-sized volume contains a generous selection of poems written from 1958 to the present, and should please readers who enjoy well-crafted, metrically conscious work that thrives on intellectual playfulness. There are some evocative poems about small things in nature - moths, bees, lichen - that draw their comparisons from the human world. There are poems about growing up in Florida (in which we learn, not surprisingly, that the poet was paid 10 cents a line by his grandmother to memorize Shakespeare). And there are poems that draw on the author's knowledge of Islam.

Ormsby likes the sound and feel of words as well as their sense, and at times his poems become as ornate as a jewel-encrusted necklace ("Articulated stars assert / Eclosion of the gold-sewn chrysalids"). Yet he can be spare when necessary, stating simply, for example, "I have always found railways stations sad."

He is not for those who like poems that make them feel, nor for those who prefer their language casual. But if you enjoy reading poetry aloud for the richness of its sound, and you keep a good dictionary by your side, then Time's Covenant is for you.