{"product_id":"that-night-we-were-ravenous-isbn-9780771082665","title":"That Night We Were Ravenous","description":"A beautiful new edition of the award-winning collection from Canada’s new Poet Laureate.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNewfoundland-born poet John Steffler is one of this country’s most accomplished writers. Recently named Canada’s national poet, he is the author of \u003cb\u003eThe Grey Islands \u003c\/b\u003e(poems) and the award-winning novel \u003cb\u003eThe Afterlife of George Cartwright\u003c\/b\u003e, both of which have become classics in our time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eThat Night We Were Ravenous\u003c\/b\u003e is Steffler’s most recent book of new poetry. In this extraordinary gathering of poems, he follows the trajectory of some of his earlier work with poems situated in Newfoundland’s coves, on trails, and in communities that testify to the pure bite and edge of this terrain. Other poems in the later sections of the book, more intimate, are set in Southern Ontario and Greece.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is poetry that captures the imagination and activates the heart. Simply by looking through Steffler’s eyes, we come away with an enlarged sense of the natural world on the one hand, and of our own humanity on the other.\u003cb\u003eWinner of the Atlantic Poetry Prize\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“John Steffler is Canada’s most sensuously passionate writer. Reading him, we are put in touch with the pure erotic draw which the world exercises upon him. The acuity of his perception, and the size of his heart, make his poems an essential part of our literature.” \u003cbr\u003e— Don McKay\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The range of poetic tone in this book, and the precision of its language, articulates why John Steffler is one of our most evocative poets.” \u003cbr\u003e— Ross Leckie, \u003ci\u003eNew Brunswick Telegraph Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eJohn Steffler\u003c\/b\u003e is Canada’s Parliamentary Poet Laureate. His five books of poetry include\u003ci\u003e The Grey Islands\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThat Night We Were Ravenous\u003c\/i\u003e, winner of the Atlantic Poetry Prize, and \u003ci\u003eHelix: New and Selected Poems\u003c\/i\u003e, winner of the Newfoundland and Labrador Poetry Prize. He is also the author of an award-winning novel, \u003ci\u003eThe Afterlife of George Cartwright\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cb\u003eAT THE FOOT OF A WALL\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy hand moves below\u003cbr\u003ein the bright element, turning\u003cbr\u003ea page. The deck chair’s bleached\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003earms, my feet bare on the flagstones: all\u003cbr\u003emute, opaque as at home.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNor are the cypress, the lemon, though trimmed with bookish\u003cbr\u003eassociations,\u003cbr\u003eeager to break their poses and dance.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI thought sun and the island’s beauties would dive\u003cbr\u003einto my eyes, out of my mouth in poems.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNearby, small lizards are skirting\u003cbr\u003ethe foot of the wall: quick\u003cbr\u003egreen marginalia,\u003cbr\u003eforeign script.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOverhead, the Grand Prix. Burly helmeted flies come\u003cbr\u003ewhining down the blue straightaway over the mulberry tree\u003cbr\u003eand smack the sun-covered house,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003edrop flat bullets around my feet. Tiny,\u003cbr\u003eterrible headaches. Twiddling legs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe lizards scribble, licking them up.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGreen, independent flames.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA Word about the Poem by John Steffler\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eI wrote this poem on the island of Naxos, in Greece, where I’d gone in the hope of returning to writing after a long exhausting year of teaching. There I had the fairly familiar experience of reaching a longed for, idealized destination — expecting in this case that the beauty and history of Naxos would somehow revive my imagination and my sense of being excited by the world — only to discover a place with a surface of factual reality that was no different from home. In a sense I did find strangeness there, but not of the sort I’d anticipated — more a foreign opacity or silencing mystery than the vestigial Arcadia I’d stupidly hoped for. Partly it was as simple as discovering once again that I couldn’t escape from myself. Partly it had to do with needing to come to terms with a place as it really was, not as I’d visualized it beforehand. The disturbing energy stirred up by these collisions was in the end reviving and exciting in unforeseen ways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI wanted the poem to convey and evoke a perplexed, estranged, almost convalescent state of mind.Poems","brand":"McClelland \u0026 Stewart","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303046172901,"sku":"NP9780771082665","price":14.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780771082665.jpg?v=1767737942","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/that-night-we-were-ravenous-isbn-9780771082665","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}