Prometheus Reconsiders Fire

In his new collection of poems, Prometheus Reconsiders Fire, PEI poet Brent MacLaine undertakes an exploration of fire. The prefatory title poem establishes Prometheus as the poet’s persona, a voice that is dedicated to the reconsideration of fire in both its benevolent and malevolent aspects. Formal and elegant, Prometheus plots a trajectory between the classical and the local, a bearing that will be familiar to readers of MacLaine’s earlier work Athena Becomes a Swallow. Wide-ranging in its geography, the new book is wrapped ’round by “The Fire Hall Suite” that begins and ends the book. These are poems that respond to the “drive-by wisdom” created by the anonymous “Sign Person” who speaks to the local community by way of the Fire Hall’s roadside sign. Framed by the “Suite,” the poems of Prometheus move between city and country. A naturalist in the city, MacLaine brings to the urban environment the acutely observing eye that has always characterized his Island nature poems. MacLaine’s imagery, both urban and rural, is remarkable, and no other Canadian poet is quite as capable as MacLaine is in marrying the formal and the colloquial.