Lookout

The first collection of new poems in more than a decade from one of Canada's most respected poets

The poems in John Steffler's new collection are enlivened by the same muscular acts of attention that characterize his earlier books. As always, his poems inhabit experience fully, senses on high alert, transmitting the abundance and turbulence of physical existence; they are charged with the raw Eros of being. Nowhere is there a more complete nature poet: attuned, robust, honest, fully informal, and emotionally candid, brimming with energy and animal spirits. Many of the poems in Lookout explore and evoke specific landscapes: the limestone barrens of Newfoundland; the Blomidon and Lewis Hills; the Greek Islands. Others dwell on personal relationships: lover, pregnant daughter, and a touching, finely tuned sequence on a family coping with a mother's Alzheimer's. There is also a wonderful set of meditations on photographs from the archives in Newfoundland. Canadian literature is blessed - and animated - by John Steffler's contributions to it.

LIMESTONE BARRENS
The Role of Calcium in Evolution
Book Rock
Cape Norman
Park Office
Barrens Willow
Wind Shadow, L’ Anse aux Meadows
Revelations
Notes on Burnt Cape
Location
Warm Shallow Sea
 
OUTSIDE
Dividing Island
Marine Drive
Body and Soul
Under Blomidon Face
Tree near York Harbour
Swoop
Inside the Boiler of the ss Ethie
Beyond Names and Laws
Wissembourg, Alsace
Amorgos
Sunburnt on Naxos
There Is No One to Blame
Bloodroot
Mail from My Pregnant Daughter
 
ONCE
 
OUTSIDE
Removals
It Is a Blue Dome
Collecting, Bay of Islands
Uplands
Skink’ s Tail
Lean-to
Beating the Bounds
Under Mad Dog Lake
Battle at Halfway Point
Melancholy Facts
Bear Brains
Smudging the Map
Blomidon Head
In the Winter
After Ten Days Together
Without Maps
Kiparissia
Tomb of Clytemnestra
Mystra
Mycenae
 
COLONIAL BUILDING ARCHIVES
VA13 Humber Mouth
A10-142 Settlement at Mount Moriah
A10-150 Holloway: John’ s Beach
A20-86 Postcard: Cement Plant, 1955
A30-160 Building the Paper Mill
VA28 Postcard: Paper Machine
A30-158 Wood Supply
A30-161 Mill Manager’ s House, Corner Brook
B10-38 Lee Wulff Fishing the Upper Humber
B10-39 Lee Wulff Fishing the Upper Humber
B10-40 Exploits River
B10-43 Self-portrait, Serpentine Valley
 
Acknowledgements