Product Description
Penelope Wain believes that her lover, Neil Macrae, has been killed while serving overseas under her father. That he died apparently in disgrace does not alter her love for him, even though her father is insistent on his guilt. What neither Penelope or her father knows is that Neil is not dead, but has returned to Halifax to clear his name.

Hugh MacLennan’s first novel is a compelling romance set against the horrors of wartime and the catastrophic Halifax Explosion of December 6, 1917. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

Brilliantly Conceived, Flawlessly Executed
Another entry from the Canadian New Library Series, another homerun for Canadian literature. That must necessarily be the ruling on this immensely engaging 1941 freshman effort from Hugh MacLennan, for "Barometer Rising" is a taut, intensely character driven novel from one of Canada's great essayists. MacLennan went on to write several other novels, more essays, and even some travelogues, history, and poetry. He is nothing if not versatile. If only more people knew about the wealth of literary gems from the Great White North awaiting their pleasure in the libraries and bookstores. For those interested in exploring the brilliance of Canadian literature, Hugh MacLennan is a great place to start. Hugh MacLennan died in 1990.

"Barometer Rising" takes place in Halifax, Nova Scotia during 1917. The war in Europe continues to grind away, chewing up young men from around the world in its trenches and no man's lands. Nearly every passing day sees troopships exiting Halifax harbor bound for the bloodbath, and nearly every day they pass supply and munitions ships entering the port on their way to and from Europe. The city is full of foreign sailors and soldiers from every point of the compass. The war is a big deal, and since Canada serves as Britain's whipping boy, Halifax provides a safe harbor beyond the reach of German U-boats. But disaster lurks in the waters off Halifax: a munitions ship loaded with 500,000 pounds of trinitrotoluol sails into the harbor and collides with another ship. The resulting explosion is nearly nuclear in its destructiveness. Thousands die as major sections of the city explode and burn. The author shrewdly sets up his novel in countdown form, beginning on the Sunday before the explosion and ending the tale the following Monday, a few days after the disaster. MacLennan makes this Nova Scotian city the major character in his book, showing the reader the wartime changes while allowing us to take an occasional glimpse behind the curtain to see the way the city was before the war.

A cast of characters parades through the streets of Halifax for our perusal. The Wain family is central to the story. There is Penelope "Penny" Wain, a brilliant woman who designs boats for the war effort while withstanding the barbs from jealous male co-workers. Her father, Colonel Wain, is an old pro-English patriarch who cannot stand the fact that he remains in Halifax while the war rages in Europe. He wishes to return to battle and seek some glory, but his first tour of duty ended in disaster. For this disgrace, Wain blames his nephew Neil Macrae. Now Neil roams the streets of Halifax, seeking redemption for a tragedy on the fields of Europe. The reemergence of Neil places Major Angus Murray in a moral quandary; he realizes the return of Wain's nephew will upset his plans for the future. The reader must decide for themselves if the choices the characters make are the correct ones.

An afterword (the Canadians are polite; they do not put spoilers at the beginning of the book as we do in the United States) written by Alistair MacLeod provides some personal anecdotes about the explosion, followed by a critique of the story. To MacLeod, the story deftly reveals the big town/small town differences between some of the characters, between those born and raised in Halifax versus those who hail from Cape Breton. For me, the most interesting theme of the book was MacLennan's political views about Canada and its relationship to the United States and England. To the author, Canada will emerge from the war as the keystone of the world, a bridge between barbaric Europe lost in its destructive wars and the emerging power of the United States. He deplores the second-class status of Canada, its relegation as second fiddle to the United Kingdom. Several times throughout the story, the characters step back from their activities and wax philosophic about the position of Canada and Nova Scotia in relation to the rest of the world. To call MacLennan a Canadian nationalist would not be too extreme of a statement.

I did not know what to expect from this book when I opened its covers. I do like Canadian literature, so that is never a problem. "Barometer Rising" is only 219 pages long, so it is necessary that the author grabs you fast and makes you care about his creation. He succeeds in spades because he brings his characters to life through carefully crafted scenes of introspection, clinical descriptions of the city, and the dramatic countdown to the explosion. The reader cares about what happens to these people, and hopes that the author will bring everything to a tidy resolution in the end. For a quick read that is hugely entertaining and leaves you hungry for more, seek out this book.

barometer rising
I found this book very hard to get into. Our grade 12 english teacher picked it for a comprehensive novel study.I think that things just moved way too slow for my liking. It had a good story line but because of the nature it was writen in I would not recomend it to anyone.

INTROSPECTORS TRAPPED IN A WEB OF SUSPENSE
A very interesting and unusual novel, and MacLennan's first (--which seems astounding, given its stylistic sophistication). The plot is intricate and suspenseful, and three of the four main characters are portrayed as fully conscious, focused beings, who are either aware of their own motives and values, or keenly interested in identifying them; the fourth character, Geoffrey Wain, exhibits a distinctly opposite mentality, and proves--therefore--to be a villainous threat to each of the others. Nautical engineer Penny Wain, Geoffrey's daughter, is a true rarity in modern literature: an intelligent, introspective, rational heroine. MacLennan's descriptive passages are typically colorful and dramatic, and often warrant immediate (and subsequent) re-reading (even though some do seem a bit drawn-out, on first reading). The much-heralded explosion is not, for my money, quite as interesting or dramatic as other parts of the plot, so the reader shouldn't "wait for" that: the first three-quarters of the book is the main course; and the last quarter, a light dessert. Overall, MacLennan has given us a banquet to savor.

Great book!
I had to read this book for english class... and I love it. Ithink that this is the the most amzaging book ever. I think thatColonel Wain kicked ( ). I thank my teacher for making me read it.

Novel with an explosive subject
BAROMETER RISING is above all a novel of place and that place is Halifax, Nova Scotia in December 1917.MacLennan is very good at evoking thesights, colors, smells, and sounds of the city and its environs.If youhave ever visited that small, but charming city, you would probably enjoyreading this novel just for nostalgia's sake.A competent, but not greatwriter, MacLennan portrays pleasingly rounded characters who are not stiffor one dimensional and weaves a plot that resolves itself in various wayson the occasion of the huge explosion that destroyed most of Halifax onDec. 6, 1917, the biggest man-made explosion in history before the nuclearage. The story is rather too neat and a little banal in the way ends aretied up.If five stars are for the greatest novels you've ever read, andfour for those that don't quite get up to that level, then three are for anaverage, competent job that can give you a couple nights' pleasure when thebranches are scraping at the window in the winter wind.Try it, you mightlike it, but if disasters are not your bag, then avoid this book becausethe main character is an explosion. ... Read more

Product Description
Hugh MacLennan is one of Canada's great writers. Five-time winner of the Governor General's Award, his work includes some of the best loved and most read Canadian novels of all time: Two Solitudes, The Watch That Ends the Night, Barometer Rising.

In this widely praised biography, written with the full cooperation of MacLennan, Elspeth Cameron describes his early life in Nova Scotia, his complex relationships with his father and mother, and the many reverses until his first great success in 1941 with Barometer Rising. Cameron's critical assessment of his work, up to and including the dense, experimental Voices in Time, places MacLennan firmly among the first rank of 20th century Canadian nationalist intellectuals, along with Harold Innes, Donald Creighton and George Grant.

Hugh MacLennan: A Writer's Life is a sympathetic and perceptive account that explores the many fascinating links between MacLennan's life and his writings. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

The Great Quebecois Novel
I enjoyed this book mostly for its presentation of the recent history of Quebec.The novel presents a kind of snapshot of the English and French cultures at a turning point in their odd collective history.I found it helpful in understanding the roots of the ethnic and historical conflicts that remain largely unresolved in much of the province.

The writing is solid if unspectacular -- overall I found that the plot held my interest, although it moved a bit slowly.All in all it's a good read, and I recommend it to anyone who wants to understand the weird sociological experiment that is Quebec.

A great canadian novel
Two solitudes by Hugh MacLennan is a graet Canadian novel. it discusses all canadian themes, such as landscape, bilingulism, conflicts on identity etc.
I will ask every canadian to read this book. It's worth your time.

Stuck with each other, for better or worse
Although it has been several years since I have read "Two Solitudes," the book remains quite vivid for me -- perhaps, in no small part, because I live only a few miles from the Quebec border, andlisten quite attentively to Canadian news on the radio.Everything, andyet nothing has changed regarding Anglo-French relations over the sixtyyears that have passed since the conclusion of the action in the book.Ofcourse, English shop clerks in Montreal no longer tell Francophone patronsto "speak white;" the Roman Catholic Church has lost virtuallyall of its influence over French Canadians; the notion of the French being"maitres chez nous" -- masters in our own house -- has triumphedto such an extent that the province came within a hair's breadth of votingfor independence several years ago.Yet despite the all but de factopolitical autonomy of Quebec -- and in no small part because of it -- allof the old misunderstanding and mistrust so skillfully depicted inMacLennan's book persist.Two profoundly different cultures, heirs toprofoundly different colonial pasts, still vie for the soul of the secondlargest nation on earth.For this reason alone, Americans (famously andshamefully ignorant of Canadian history) ought to read "TwoSolitudes;" for Canadians, or course, it should be required reading. But "Two Solitudes" is not merely a sociopolitical tract.Ifound the love story quite engaging, with neither of the characterspresented as a mere representation of ethnicity and class, and theresolution ennobling in a way one doesn't expect from a novel any more. The term "old-fashioned" comes to mind, but I'm afraid that willbe terribly off-putting for many modern readers.Let's call the booksolid, sure, and rewarding, then -- and evocative and informative as well. That's a lot to put into a package this tidily crafted, but MacLennan hasdone it well.Exclusive of the work of Robertson Davies, in a class byitself, "Two Solitudes" bids fair to be called the Great CanadianNovel.

Too much history
Two Solitudes, written by Hugh MacLennan, is a historical tragedy remembering the differences between the French and English Canadians.Beginning in 1917, passing through World War II, and finishing in 1939, thestory is at the same time historical and sentimental.The reader can sensethe dark side of the Church nourishing the rancour of the French Canadiansagainst the English Canadians because of their importance.The book startsin the parish of Saint-Marc, with its priest, Father Beaubien, which almostrules the village except for a powerful man, Athanase Tallard that istrying to industrialise it for good.A failure in everything heenterprised, Athanase have even changed religion, almost a crime at thattime, to be able to get away from the priest and make his son Paul go to agood English school.Even if I found the story die with this character, Ifound it very realistic and historical and it helped me to understand somevery good facts about that time.

The first pages help the reader toknow the characters of the story but there is no conflict.Its likereading Peter Pan without Captain Hooks: "Athanase Tallard was the onlylimit, under God and the law, to the priest's authority in Saint-Marc. Since the days of the early French colonization, the Tallard had beenseigneurs."

When McQueen started to be present in the plot, themajor conflict was established.That was almost the story, after that,they were only small and they weren't permanent:-"The details make nodifference.Your trying to build a factory here." -"Is that against thelaw?" -Lawyer's arguments are useless with me.Are you, or are you not,planning to buy the Tremblay land for a factory?" -"And if I am?" -"I willtell Tremblay not to sell.I will tell every farmer you have alreadytalked not to sell." After Athanase's death, the story turned fromtragedical to romentical.It changed into roses when Heather and Paul metagain and that will probably make the reader lose attention in the book: -"Have you ever been in love?" -"I'm not sure.I've thought I was severaltimes."

The setting was very good.The places and the time werevery typical as the characters were to.The author was well informed aboutthe time and history, you could imagine it through his writing.

HughMacLennan talked a lot about French Canadians rancour against the EnglishCanadians.But he made the English neutral as if they had nothing againstthem.

In conclusion, with a lack of conflict, too much romantism and anda very good setting, this book, may be a very good one for readers whominterests are in history, but I wouldn't read it for the fun of it.Willyou?

Fight On Two Races
Two Solitudes by Hugh MacLennan, is a novel whose title has become significant of Canada's most troubling legacy: the relations between English and French Canadians. Using historical settings within amythological framework, MacLennan explores the tensions in these relationsfrom World War One to 1939. The French Canadian realities are set in theparish of Saint-Marc, which is dominated by its priest, Father Beaubien,and by Athanase Tallard, a powerful but tragic figure blamed by his churchfor trying to industrialize the village. Even if I didn't like the book, itdoes in fact describe how the French and English continued to dislike eachother, and how the church was involved in the past.

Two Solitudes,in my opinion is a factual descriptive book, which holds a subject, whichis very interesting. But, I find that the author, Hugh MacLennan doesn'tmake a very good job in setting a climax in the story. It takes a very longtime to get some conflict and have some affection towards the characters.

The book started very slowly since there was nothing going on. Noactions were taking place. It was only description was being said in thefirst few chapters so I lost interest in the story very quickly.Description remained constant throughout the entire book, which was a majorreason why I got bored and didn't like this book.

I showed someinterest in the book, about a quarter way down. At last, I saw some actionsand a bit of conflict arising, which held my attention for a little while.But unfortunately, it didn't last for a very long time. Description tookover the action and I got lost and bored. This, I found, was a major flawof the book- not enough action and too much description.

A readerfrom Ontario Canada wrote a review on this book, and he says the exact samething as I said. This is a quote from his review:"Slow at first, andnot a lot of action, but the powerful descriptions of the land and thein-depth characters make up for it in a way. This book spans a time periodof 1917 to 1939 and takes place primarily in Quebec, Canada. It tells thestory of several French-Canadians and English-Canadians, and their struggleto get by and to find themselves amidst the bitterness between the Frenchand the English in war time Canada. It's not the most enlightening bookI've read, but I gave the Canadian author credit- it wasn't a waste of timeto read."

I also had a great difficulty of understanding the bookfor many reasons. The main reason is because at certain points, the authorsuddenly switched scenes without telling us. For example: once the priestand Mr. Tallard were talking about Paul going to an English school, and injust a couple of seconds, two different people were talking about somethingwhich didn't even relate to Paul going to an English school. It got veryconfusing.

Another reason of confusion is inadequate informationabout the characters. Since there is a whole lot of people in the book, itis necessary to identify who each of them is related to. But the authordidn't do this in the book. I didn't know which person was married to whomin the story, and which person was related to whom. Only till the end ofthe book that I was able to establish all of the characters and who theyrelated to.

Though tough to understand, it shows that the authorhad very appropriate knowledge on how the people lived back in the earlytwentieth century. He appropriately covered all aspects on how peopleacted, lived and behaved during this period of time.

Hugh MacLennanknew exactly how and why the church was involved in everyone's daily life.He uses the church as a major conflict in Two Solitudes. For example: Mr.Tallard and the priest were arguing about Paul, Tallard's son, going to anEnglish school. The priest insisted that he didn't because he thought thatby going to an English school, it would ruin his religion since the Englishwere Protestant and the French, including Paul, were Catholic. MacLennanknew how the church was involved in their lives, and he makes it a majorconflict and a deal of discussion in Two Solitudes.

The main topicof the story is the conflict between the English and the French. I findthat MacLennan does a great job of identifying their action towards eachother. He describes a great deal of hate between them. He identifies thisby name calling and making the characters feel hatred if someone practicesa different religion from them or speaks a different language than them. AsI did some research of how people acted in this period of time, I learnedthat there was a lot of disgrace between these two people.

The mainconflict in the first part is the French rebelling against officers becausethey didn't want to go to war. MacLennan perfectly described how peoplereacted when they were forced to go to war. This was a big part of therebellions, which happened, in the early twentieth century. I found thispart, basically the most interesting since MacLennan describes the Frenchattacking officers, and how the French felt to be forced to go to war.

Even if I got lost during reading the book, I still learned a lot about howthe people felt and reacted during this period of time. If you like books,which happen during this period of this time, than this is probably yourbook. The only thing is that you must have patience, because the conflictdoesn't happen right away. But if you need some conflict and some action, Idon't suggest this book to you. ... Read more

Product Description
From handling of the chessmen you infer the secret springs of human character. To pluck the enemy chessman between your fingers and replace it with your own reveals the cultivated, well-bred killer who cannot stand the sight of blood; knock the chessman over with a small click of wood on wood tells of an aesthetic craving for the fatal instrument, of one more passionate than violent; to push the piece from its intended square is signal of aggressive character and plainly indicates that power is the motive for committing murder; some will hold the captured piece and caress it nervously: these kill from cowardice; those who seem apologetic, taking pawns reluctantly, kill for noble reasons; and he who clears the board with one great sweep of his hand will kill from lack of hope, defeated by the prospect of defeat, as did my father only death could mate. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Solid, accessible, positional play
Chess and poetry have a long history together.A game based upon a battle metaphor and individual confrontation has a great deal of symbolic material and ideas as a source of poetry.Solway's poems, using the chess imagery as a springboard for a number of observations and images, work quite well.Nothing in this work is the daring gambit that a 19th Century poet might bring to the chess motif, but in poetry, as in chess, the thrill of the unrestrained tactician has largely given way to the quiet, restrained accumulation of minor advantages and arcane theoretical novelties.If Mr. Solway's poems strike one more as the work of a positional Petrosian than a madness-tinged Morphy, the reader does not suffer.The work does not make any bold sacrifices in search of a quick checkmate, but the use of the metaphor to describe family interactions is quietly winning, and ultimately succeeds.This is accessible material, capably written, and I recommend it. ... Read more

Product Description
'We are always in the middle of life, looking forwards and backwards; the only movement we can make to defy physics and history is the journey of the spirit. The Ishtar Gate, a ceremonial gate from the palace of Nebuchadnezzar at Babylon, reconstructed and housed in the Staatliche Museum, Berlin, is my personal symbol for the merging of ancient and modern culture, the old goddess-centred religions and the scholarly, rational West' - So wrote Diana Brebner of the book she planned to write. Though cancer claimed her life before she could complete this project, she wrote some thirty poems towards it. Here is a poet in extreme control of her craft: the aesthetic refinement, the musicality of language, the spiritual vision, and the playfulness that drew readers to Brebner's previous award-winning books - "Radiant Life Forms", "The Golden Lotus", and "Flora & Fauna" - resonate with even greater force in her last poems.The elements - earth, air, water, and fire - are all here. And the voice is singular, full of elegance and abandon, an Old World respect for art and history and a New World desire for wilderness and adventure.From within the "Ishtar Gate", we see a canoe on a northern lake, a scene from Vermeer, a line by Sylvia Plath, a Polaroid image of a heart, a jar of orange marmalade, a frozen Aphrodite in a field of snow. In this place of beauty and danger, the poems live. "The Ishtar Gate" testifies to Brebner's belief in 'the indefatigable forces of poetry and imagination'. ... Read more

Product Description
'Uncertain as always whether this republic is past saving or whether some of us still tread the perilous path of the future part of me just meditates on the new and more flourishing wildlife that is improving Point Reyes ten years after the Mount Vision fire From the glories of the Tang Dynasty I recall only one date: the year the usurper An Lushan drove both Wang Wei and Du Fu far from the corrupt court into the mountains where for the first time they were free to write the only poems we remember' - excerpt from "The Tao of 9/11". Working always to connect the polemical to the personal, Peter Dale Scott's political poems - from the tear gas of Berkeley protests in the 1960s to the problems of Thai forest monks in an era of drug-trafficking and deforestation - are a process of self-questioning. Self-questioning also marks his meditation poems, including a sequence on the death of his first wife. In opposition to contemporary poems of studied meaninglessness, Scott increasingly recognizes a compulsion in himself to radically reaffirm traditional rejections of the external world and turn to the refuges of poets before him, the enduring commonplaces that are more than cliches. ... Read more

Product Description
From Two Wings: She would drift into the kitchen trailing fragments of a hymn that spoke of God, a river, the pair of golden wings that would be hers on Judgement Day and were you to look at her then you might well decide your best bet for a meal would be to eat out: she was blind and appeared a little lost in her tile and linoleum kingdom. But she vaguely addressed the garlic, the onion, the tomato and between her hands rubbed a sprig of rosemary over olive oil. A fragrance then arose and you decided you had best sit down. And you did. Did you fall asleep? Did you dream? You awoke to the smart snap of sails: the billowing of a tablecloth. She returned and a generous bowl was placed in front of you. Then she crossed her arms and waited: her prayer done, your eating was its Amen.If "Map of Dreams" ended with the poet unable to reach his dreamt island, here he returns to the world around him and finds it full: a blind cook clattering in her kitchen, a great-uncle raising birds behind locked doors, lovers writing to each other out of touch and out of synch.He sees as well a world riven by magic: Noah's wife and her tears, a broom yearning for a dance, and an angel inventing the blues. Like the mime in Marcel, "Bamboo Church" sets a lavish table 'in the house of the hungry'. ... Read more

Product Description
Shawna Lemay scrutinizes some of the best-known art masterpieces of the Western World, alerting her readers to the power and peril of seduction. "All the God-sized Fruit" melds the sister arts - poetry and painting - in a sensual exploration of history, forgery, and violation. In poems rich with sensory pleasure, Lemay explores the place where image and inspiration meet. ... Read more

Product Description
Vow, a bald eagle in a riverside fir stares at the uncarved faces of a thousand pumpkins sagging into frost behind a barn of faded planks. Hours pass. Who will blink first? It is that sort of morning for the heart; the living are giving the dead an honest test. A man has walked out to be alone with the earth. A man of his age, he equates time with grief most days, but now he has decided to wait. In the silence, where do his raised eyes fit? I'm not that man, I'm not between the fir and the rot of the pumpkin fields, but I'll pick up the gauntlet of his morning nonetheless, stand to the side of the fierce contest and not make the eyes of the eagle shift. ... Read more

Product Description
What does a speaker with palilalia sound like? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, palilalia is 'disordered speech - an involuntary repetition of words, phrases, or sentences'. Listening to someone with palilalia, you might think he is emphasizing his point, pleading with you to hear him. But then you realize that he is talking to himself, quietly drifting away at thought's end. Palilalia is on one hand an affliction to be suppressed, and on the other a kind of mantra. 'Your repetitious tics', the ghost of the poet's mentor, Northrop Frye, tells him, 'are the ecstatic rhapsodist's verbal, whirligag, the slangster's whizzle, and conjuration, philologist's hullabaloo'. Abandon your scruples, give over to the energy that spends itself, and work that energy until every last word is right. Hearing his own ghosts, Jeffery Donaldson offers poems about Tourette's Syndrome, about his loves and blessings, about the erotic life, and about the grace of a stillness in the midst of so much mental noise. Paul Valery said that a poem is never finished, only abandoned. All poets have palilalia, or should have. ... Read more

Product Description
Words across a Ouija Board: Memory is the mother of the Muses, said the Greeks. What we write are shadows of recollections, fictions growing out of other fictions. But now these words grow out of memory failing, as where and when blanch slowly to perhaps. The two who sheltered from the sudden downpour, hugging close, or woke to each other in the dark, or quarreled hatefully-were they snatches of old stories, or were you once my wife? Death veils you in the features of passers-by, and age makes yellow secrets of our letters, until the past is unalloyed with circumstance, and becomes pure moments of unearned deserving. ... Read more

Product Description
They must have decided to return to the ship despite the flaming sword of the never-setting, the dark sword of the never-rising, sun. Same old story. The way back into the garden is also the way into the realm of the minerals. In the end, what we are looking for will find us. "Living must be your whole occupation," the poet wrote. He got it right. No, he got it half right.Based upon the various conflicting accounts of John Franklin's calamitous attempt to complete and map the Northwest Passage, "Franklin's Passage" takes as its starting point a series of rhetorical questions posed by Henry David Thoreau in Walden: "Is not our own interior white on the chart? Is it a North-West passage around this continent, that we would find? Are these the problems which most concern mankind? Is Franklin the only man who is lost?" David Solway explores the concepts of narrative, parable, and allegory, treating the failed Expedition as an unfolding text in which the human adventure is subsumed and recorded, introducing the Expedition as a mirror in which the soul may see itself. ... Read more

Product Description
Opening the Storm Eye You spin the wheels of your red truck and speak of tornados you've known how they drive through homes and create orphans. I see your girlhood divided by unremarkable years and years where you crouched in the bathtub and prayed to the deep and steady anchor of the plumbing that you would be left alive after house and family had been sucked away. Picking out cherries from a roadside stand unaware of the change in weather, of you behind me. As your lips claim my neck the red relents in my fist. Coins scatter in the fruit as the sky rolls over us. The rain comes in sheets like the wings of netted birds throbbing and falling. While I buy the fruit you wait in your red truck playing the engine. I stumble to meet you drunk on the curve of your mouth, a cardinal on fermented autumn berries. With my tongue I would lick the dust from your eyes, I would offer shelter. Rachel Rose is a poet living in Montreal. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Brilliant
Blimey (that gives away that I'm British!) - this is truely excellent poetry - the sort that makes you catch your breath, sweat, sob and wonder at the use of verse that leaves strong emotions surging 'round your body.Well isn't that what poetry is supposed to do?Yes but how often is the feeling so affecting that I've had to buy this book for all my friends - only Mary Oliver and Micheal Ondjaatie have moved me as much. Ms Rose's poetry is much harsher, more angst ridden and more passionate - but I'm guessing she's younger.Someone get her to write more! ... Read more