| Author: | Don Gutteridge | ISBN: | 9781770849471 |
| Publisher: | Don Gutteridge | Publication: | May 17, 2017 |
| Imprint: | Language: | English |
| Author: | Don Gutteridge |
| ISBN: | 9781770849471 |
| Publisher: | Don Gutteridge |
| Publication: | May 17, 2017 |
| Imprint: | |
| Language: | English |
"The poems in this collection span the decades of the poet’s existence, beginning with his childhood in the small village of Point Edward, Ontario. The poems celebrating his youth are filled with contrasts; images of the endless sands of the beach at Canatara that are “svelte and summering as/seven Saharas” and speak of perpetual summers, even as the actors in those long-ago memories were reaching out all-too-swiftly past their childhood innocence and entering the uncertain waters of their coming of age. Gutteridge has a divine gift; he crafts visions with an elegant ease, splashing colors on canvas of the mind’s eye and recreating the past so vividly it argues for the concept of time standing still. Each poem is a treat, a moment to be savoured, a contradiction of permanence and the passage of time. In Syllables, Gutteridge expresses the wish to someday “write the perfect/poem,” to hear his “syllables sing.” A careful look at just about any of the poems in The Sands of Canatara reveals those singing syllables already there and waiting."
- Jack Magnus for Readers’ Favorite Reviews.
"For poet Don Gutteridge the village of Point Edward is a place of places with the blond sands and blue waters of Canatara located near the confluence of St. Clair River and Lake Huron’s summer shores. These poems rise in wise little breaths out of the formative years imagined in brilliant recollection. Both when and where yield up their inner truths to the precision of clear memory and Gutteridge knows there can be no ‘somewhere else’ when a place is fixed in the mind by time lived as it goes deep in the soul of the poet. Canatara, the title word for the region that inspired this collection of poems, is an Ojibwa word meaning ‘blue water.’ One might add the neologism “some-when” to capture the idea of being somewhere in place and time and being rooted deep and thereby belonging as the rivers and the lakes belong exactly where they are even as they meander into myth and story. This beautiful book culminates in contemplations of the sweet and melancholy loneliness of the poet late in life, experiencing the consoling solitude of being alive and waiting for the grace that will come to the attentive and fortunate incarnation abiding and sufficiently present to receive the gifts of grace."
- Reviewed by John B. Lee, Poet Laureate of Norfolk County and the City of Brantford.
"The poems in this collection span the decades of the poet’s existence, beginning with his childhood in the small village of Point Edward, Ontario. The poems celebrating his youth are filled with contrasts; images of the endless sands of the beach at Canatara that are “svelte and summering as/seven Saharas” and speak of perpetual summers, even as the actors in those long-ago memories were reaching out all-too-swiftly past their childhood innocence and entering the uncertain waters of their coming of age. Gutteridge has a divine gift; he crafts visions with an elegant ease, splashing colors on canvas of the mind’s eye and recreating the past so vividly it argues for the concept of time standing still. Each poem is a treat, a moment to be savoured, a contradiction of permanence and the passage of time. In Syllables, Gutteridge expresses the wish to someday “write the perfect/poem,” to hear his “syllables sing.” A careful look at just about any of the poems in The Sands of Canatara reveals those singing syllables already there and waiting."
- Jack Magnus for Readers’ Favorite Reviews.
"For poet Don Gutteridge the village of Point Edward is a place of places with the blond sands and blue waters of Canatara located near the confluence of St. Clair River and Lake Huron’s summer shores. These poems rise in wise little breaths out of the formative years imagined in brilliant recollection. Both when and where yield up their inner truths to the precision of clear memory and Gutteridge knows there can be no ‘somewhere else’ when a place is fixed in the mind by time lived as it goes deep in the soul of the poet. Canatara, the title word for the region that inspired this collection of poems, is an Ojibwa word meaning ‘blue water.’ One might add the neologism “some-when” to capture the idea of being somewhere in place and time and being rooted deep and thereby belonging as the rivers and the lakes belong exactly where they are even as they meander into myth and story. This beautiful book culminates in contemplations of the sweet and melancholy loneliness of the poet late in life, experiencing the consoling solitude of being alive and waiting for the grace that will come to the attentive and fortunate incarnation abiding and sufficiently present to receive the gifts of grace."
- Reviewed by John B. Lee, Poet Laureate of Norfolk County and the City of Brantford.
