First Annual Festival of Women's Poetry *********************November 2008*********************

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First Annual Festival of Women's Poetry *********************November 2008********************* :: *International section :: Women poets from around the World :: Canada :: Phyllis Webb

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Topic: Phyllis Webb (Read 659 times)

louisa
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Phyllis Webb
« Thread Started on Oct 13, 2008, 5:00am »

Phyllis Webb

Proposition

I could divide a leaf
and give you half.

Or I could search for two leaves
sending you one.

Or I could walk to the river
and look across

and seeing you there,
or not there,

absence or presence,
would spring the balance to my day.

Or I could directly find you and take your hand
so that one hand would be given

and one kept, like a split leaf
or like two leaves separate.

These would be signs and offerings:
the just passion, just encountering.

Or we perhaps could speed four eyes,
the chariot horses of our dreams and visions,

in them direction and decision find.
The split leaf floating on the river,

the hand sketching in the air
a half-moon, its hidden wholeness there.

from The Vision Tree, Selected Poems, Talonbooks, 1982,
which won the Governer General's Award for Poetry.

The text of Proposition and an analysis of the poem by Yvonne Blomer can be found on the Arc Poetry: How Poems Work website

http://www.arcpoetry.ca/howpoemswork/features/2004_04_blomer.php

Other sites of interest - -

http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/about/....-e.htm?param=14

http://www.uwo.ca/english/canadianpoetry/cpjrn/vol32/potvin.htm

http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/literaryarchives/027011-200.142-e.html

http://www.bcbookworld.com/terasen/phyllisweb.html

« Last Edit: Oct 13, 2008, 9:01pm by louisa »

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