{"product_id":"between-the-walls-isbn-9780771087448","title":"Between the Walls","description":"Paul Vermeersch examines the forces that divide us and isolate us as individuals in both the natural and man-made worlds, at the moments when those worlds intersect, and in the places where we live and work. During a violent row between teenage boys, a starling explodes like a hand grenade.  A clutter of inbred cats plays out the rise and fall of mankind in a secluded country barn. While driving his girlfriend home, a young man is forced to alter the course of his future by the sudden appearance of a plague of toads. And in the harrowing final sequence, we are taken on a tour through a fragile city verging on its own ruin. As fantastic as they are visceral, these poems shed new light on our darkest corners and take us deep between the walls, those that are thrust up before us as well as those of our own making.“Vermeersh is one of Canada’s best young poets.… [The  poems in \u003ci\u003eBetween the Walls\u003c\/i\u003e] explore the tension between the natural world and the artifice of our society, and the collision between the public sphere and the secret corners of our private lives.”\u003cbr\u003e–Vancouver \u003ci\u003eProvince\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Vermeersch transcends time and self through luminous turns of language and singular states of mind.”\u003cbr\u003e–\u003ci\u003eCanadian Literature\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Vermeersch illustrates his true skills in the delicate simplicity of words. He is at the bright beginning of a long career.”\u003cbr\u003e–\u003ci\u003eBroken Pencil\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The poems are sharply observed and pitch-perfect.… both warped, and wise.”\u003cbr\u003e–\u003ci\u003eToronto Star\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003ePaul Vermeersch\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of three collections of poetry: \u003ci\u003eThe Fat Kid\u003c\/i\u003e, Burn, a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Award, and, most recently, \u003ci\u003eBetween the Walls\u003c\/i\u003e. He is also the editor of the anthology \u003ci\u003eThe I.V. Lounge Reader\u003c\/i\u003e. His poetry has been published widely in literary journals and magazines across the country. He lives in Toronto, where he is poetry editor for Insomniac Press.HE WILL NOT DROWN HIS SORROWS\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eMan to man.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIf only I knew more about the human heart,\u003cbr\u003eI could fuel its fire or stamp it out\u003cbr\u003ecompletely. If only I knew more\u003cbr\u003eabout songbirds, I could tell you\u003cbr\u003eexactly what is singing there unseen\u003cbr\u003ein that tree across the street – that song\u003cbr\u003ehas been, so far, the best part of my day,\u003cbr\u003ea song as old as our four-chambered hearts,\u003cbr\u003eolder maybe, a melody composed a million\u003cbr\u003eyears ago and never altered – surely\u003cbr\u003emusical genius thrived before the wheel,\u003cbr\u003ebefore our weapons and our calculus,\u003cbr\u003eand when we’re gone that song\u003cbr\u003ewill continue in the trees and will not change.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut we know that song, too. We were born\u003cbr\u003ewith its notes and rests transcribed\u003cbr\u003ein the cells of our own warm blood\u003cbr\u003eand we’ve sung it more or less\u003cbr\u003eunsuccessfully in a hundred-­odd cities\u003cbr\u003ebetween us, lone birds in full throat,\u003cbr\u003ejoyous and unheard. And we’ve fallen\u003cbr\u003esilent, sullen, drunk, when our song\u003cbr\u003ehas failed too often. But not that bird\u003cbr\u003eacross the street – he will not drown\u003cbr\u003ehis sorrows, because he has none.\u003cbr\u003eHe will sing until his lady comes or,\u003cbr\u003ein her place, his death, always proud, always\u003cbr\u003esinging, and you know as well as I do\u003cbr\u003ewhat he does not feel: the bitterness\u003cbr\u003eof solitude, and you also understand\u003cbr\u003ethere are times when, if I could catch him,\u003cbr\u003eI would break his neck and end it\u003cbr\u003eso he will not have to sing his song alone.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA Word About the Poem\u003c\/b\u003e By Paul Vermeersch\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen I was writing the poems in my book \u003ci\u003eBetween the Walls,\u003c\/i\u003e I had the feeling--though I took little notice of it at the time--that I was writing a “city” book. It seemed to me I was tackling, for the most part, themes and subject matter that evoked an urban environment: litter-filled alleys, busy streets, upscale neighbourhoods encircling a rundown core, sprawl and development at the city’s edge, etc. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt’s interesting how often writers can surprise themselves. When the book was completed, I was struck by how much of the natural world was present in the collection. Birds and animals inhabit the poems as much as humans do. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOften, the animals in my poems represent human emotional states, or else stand in counterpoint to human flaws and characteristics. This poem, “He Will Not Drown His Sorrows,” is a good example. I wrote it for a close friend who at the time had been complaining about his lousy, if non-existent, love life. I felt, in order to commiserate completely with my friend, I needed an external target at which to direct a hapless single person’s Valentine’s Day acrimony. A witless bird who persistently sings his song, ever sweetly and beautifully, even when there is no hope of attracting a mate, seemed perfect.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy friend enjoyed the poem, and though I can’t claim it helped him get out of his dating slump, I’m happy to say he is now engaged to be married. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHow the Poem Works\u003c\/b\u003e By A. F. Moritz\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe first thing likely to strike a reader about Paul Vermeersch's \"He Will Not Drown His Sorrows\" is the incisive, pungently contemporary voice that speaks it. This voice is of our moment not only in the casual yet dartingly swiftness of its movement from one experience and feeling to another, but especially in its basic tone. The tone is complex, but encompasses a sense of dislocation from society, a certain dread, a controlled bitterness, and an assumed self-mastery in which menacingly violent, even self-destructive emotions sometimes approach the surface. Vermeersch leaves the nature of the sorrows undefined, which emphasizes the painful concreteness he has given to the speaker's contemplation of the way in which sorrow itself, frequently repeated in perhaps many forms, has been an almost unmanageable constant in his life.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eBut the second thing a reader might notice is how much of the English classics there is in this very current poem. For example, it is like a dark rewriting of the \"Ode to a Nightingale.\" Like Keats's nightingale, Vermeersch's bird sings in a way that reminds us of human sorrow, but which is free of sorrow, and thus seems to offer a release, an alternative ... until we return into ourselves. Vermeersch's tone and ideas are different, of course, but still the similarities are striking, and the poem develops some of its power from this grapple with Keats. Similarly, the racy versification, seemingly so conversational, on closer inspection is always within hailing distance of traditional metrics, and at points discloses a strictly classical fingering of the syllables. For example, note how both stanzas end with a resonant pentameter, each equipped with a little anapestic skip in the first foot. Here again, the allusion to the \"classic\", with its dominant ideal of calm and balance, adds tension and contrast to the contemporary mood, and contributes much to the beauty of the poem's central emotional revelation.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eA.F. Moritz's poetry has recently won the 2005 ReLit Award (for \u003c\/i\u003eNight Street Repairs\u003ci\u003e, and the Bess Hokin Award of \u003c\/i\u003ePoetry\u003ci\u003e magazine and the Stover Award of the \u003c\/i\u003eSouthwest Review\u003ci\u003e.\u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"McClelland \u0026 Stewart","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303802163429,"sku":"NP9780771087448","price":12.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780771087448.jpg?v=1767722506","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/between-the-walls-isbn-9780771087448","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}