Description
Commenting on the fears and aspirations of contemporary citizens, this poetry collection speaks with an elegantly lyrical voice that is simultaneously knowing and naïve. Written in spare phrasal passages, these poems have an ephemeral musicality. The verses create images for the reader that are quick, fleeting flickers?like viewing a painting with flashbulbs. Reflecting on human relationships, these poems show them to be like an empty harbor into which ships carrying unexpected cargo sail.
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Ann Lauterbach, the highly esteemed poet who selected Paul Legault's manuscript for the Omnidawn Poetry Prize, explains that in these poems, “History is here, in uneasy tangents; landscape is here, lonely in its names; luminous images are here but they are not pictures; music is here in a spare, phrasal pacing… Here, in The Madeleine Poems, modernity's abandonment becomes a bare harbor into which sail vessels carrying unexpected cargo.” In hauntingly beautiful lyricism, and with a lightness that conveys the most weighty of subjects, Legault offers a dynamically charged vision of the real as he perceives its volatile, constantly shifting valences.
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