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Back in November, I read a post over at Laurie Purdie Salas's blog in which she called for two poems for her (now) newly released title from Compass Point Books, Write Your Own Poetry by Laura Purdie Salas.

I submitted two poems, one for each of the categories that Laura needed, and was thrilled when my bathtub-related poem was chosen for inclusion. When I was at ALA last weekend, I got to see and hold a copy of the actual book over at the Compass Point booth. My poem is there on the right-hand page, near the very small rubber ducky.

Wanna know what the poem says? Since I'm sure at least one or two folks out there might, here it is:

In the Bathtub of Possibilities
by Kelly Fineman

I am:

    a landscaper
        clearing a lake amid bubble mountains

    an admiral
        directing battles between rubber ducks
        and drakes

    a mermaid
        my hair a floating halo
        or fishnet

    Now, Alice
        in a towel
          too big for the rabbit-hole drain

Today I want to talk a bit about processional by Anne Compton. (And yes, the title has a lower-case "p", which I will ask Anne about in her interview. She does not, as a rule, use only lower case letters, a la ee cummings.) Her first collection, Opening the Island won the Atlantic Poetry Prize. This book, processional won both the Atlantic Poetry Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry in 2005. The GG is one of Canada’s top literary prizes. That gives you some idea of how remarkable the quality of Anne Compton’s poems are.

The poems in processional are organized into five sections. The section titles are:
The Mind in Winter
The House, One Field Away
And Now to Play
Too Late in the Wrong Rain
We Have Had Our Summer Evenings

If you’re guessing they’re seasonally organized, then you’re partially correct – but there are some overlaps, and the sections are grounded in place and experience as much as in time.

Today, I share with you by permission of the author two poems from processional.

The first poem I’d like to share is "From Vernal Equinox to Solstice," one of the poems in the first part of the book. One I love for it’s sly humor at the start, and it’s wisdom and dark humor at the end (no pun intended).

From Vernal Equinox to Solstice
by Anne Compton

Day before yesterday, Spring comes down the road, cheeky
bugger. Unpacking promises: peddler to the housebound.

Opens his carpetbag: sunlight columns floor to ceiling,
That’s nothing, he says. By solstice, I can keep it up for hours.

Spills his goods over the cold ground and a great fog rises.

Out of it comes an old woman with bad breath, muttering.

Fools. Stops at your house to steal words, the bright ones
you’ve kept in a button box all winter. Saved up for a boy
whose good looks, you’ve heard, gain with every passing day.

Fingers the mid-Lent cake. Simnel. Bites off sentences:
The most of light’s the beginning of darkness. You’ll see.

Rendered tallow, the look of her. A croaky laugh, Of course
you won’t. You’re besotted. More’s the pity when it comes to light.

How much do I love the possible double meaning of that last sentence? Do you really have to ask?? For those wondering, "simnel" is a light fruitcake, covered in marzipan, and eaten on Mothering Day (the fourth Sunday in Lent, when people traditionally returned to their "mother church" for the day, thereby reuniting with family as well). In some Church of England churches, Mothering Sunday is the only day during Lent on which marriages may be performed.

The second poem I’d like to share is from the fourth section of the book, "Too Late in the Wrong Rain." The section gets its name from a line from a poem by Dylan Thomas called "On a Wedding Anniversary." It’s called "If I Lived with You," and there’s a wistfulness and a warmth to it that pulls me in. I’m anxious to hear what all of you think of it, and of the other poem as well. Ordinarily, I’d add the poet’s name between the title and the body of the poem here, but in this particular case, it gets in the way.

If I Lived with You

You’d fix up everything broken in my house.
And I’d fix up your spelling. With my best scissors
I’d trim your beard, not even noticing the grey bits.
I wouldn’t have a problem
&emsp &emsp &emsp &emsp &emsp with squirrels in the walls
&emsp &emsp &emsp &emsp &emsp mould in the cellar.
And I’d find your glasses by evening. Promise.
We’d have mealy pudding on Robbie Burns Day.
Fish through Lent. Keep house by the Julian calendar.
And I’d tell you, once a day at least, the sound
Of your voice in my head when you’re absent.
Oblate as two breaths. That’d be the difference.
You’re way late is something I’d never say.
Wouldn’t have to. We’d both know time’s long at the last.
Friday would not evaporate as soon as we’re through with it.

As for all the other stuff,
In a small room we’d call sonnet, I’d make up a bed as usual.

This week, I’m sharing with you (by permission of the author) two poems by Anne Compton from her first poetry collection, Opening the Island. This poetry collection won the Atlantic Poetry Prize in 2003, and for good reason – the poems are spectacular.



Anne Compton is a Canadian poet who teaches literature and creative writing at the University of New Brunswick in Saint John, New Brunswick. I bought a signed copy of this book, and of her second book, Processional, when I was in Saint John on my cruise vacation, and I recently got in touch with her to seek her permission to include some of her poems here, and to see if she’d agree to an interview – which, I am pleased to say, will be coming soon!

About Opening the Island

The "Island" in the title is Prince Edward Island, an island province in eastern Canada, where Anne Compton grew up. The book is organized in five sections, entitled At the Bridge the Body Rises: poems about PEI, including some that seem to be about her childhood there; Women Writing Men: an imagining of correspondence from women throughout history (real and fictional) to men, including titles such as "Hester Prynne’s Letter to Surveyor Pue" and "Rheumatic Fever: any nineteeth-century poet to her mentor"; Inherit the Light, a grouping of poems that have to do with light, including a number of ekphrastic poems apparently based on or inspired by famous paintings; Body my house/my horse my hound/what will I do/when you are fallen: the title of this section is a quote from May Swenson, and the poems within it are sometimes about the body, and sometimes about something else as metaphor for the body (or vice-versa); and finally is the last part, Closing the Island: these poems are autumnal, they talk of closing houses, leaving the island, moving on from the past.

The first selection today is from Women Writing Men, and is called "Do Not Write Any More." I feel the need to add that after I read this one, I feel the need to sit and think for a few minutes, so by all means, feel free to do the same before moving on.

Do Not Write Any More
by Anne Compton

love forgone lives on

a lit lamp in a cupboard, bolted
dangerous

yet in that room where the cupboard is
light leaks out

&emsp &emsp &emsp &emsp &emsp though no one says
&emsp &emsp &emsp &emsp &emsp they see

over there years away by water or whatever
the everyday things you’re doing
have my notice, my part
passed into flame


The next selection I have for you is from Body my house . . . , and is entitled "The Womb Lies Beneath the Heart." This one makes me think of my college boyfriend, and all those unanswerable "what ifs". I think it’s the solo line in the middle that’s particularly devastating, in the best possible sense of the word.

The Womb Lies Beneath the Heart
by Anne Compton

There was a child &emsp too beautiful to bear
I could not call her down &emsp be her way into the world.

Dear friend, do you ever think of that child
and the tall likeness of your ways she’d be to-day?

Can we give names to the unconceived?

I do not ask now about you and me, and the way
it went. But with the lilacs blooming by the porch

a stone turned and I heard a heart beat.
I thought of us in her, and her in me.

Usually, I do not hear a sound.
Speech is slow and small after such silence.

Anne Compton’s book, Opening the Island is available online from U.S. and Canadian booksellers. And do stop back in the next few weeks – I will be interviewing Anne and discussing more of her work soon.