Exploring Amazement
~New and Selected Poems~
by Alan Pearson
Also see Alan's previous book
Flashing On All Facets
Alan Pearson was bom in Yorkshire, England in 1930, Pearson moved to Canada in the early 1950s at the age of 22. It wasn't until his early 30s that his passion for poetry developed in earnest. As a young man, he'd read the works of famous poets like T.S. Eliot and Philip Larkin, who he credits as being the poet who first. inspired him to write.
Living in Montreal during the 1960s, Pearson became acquainted with many poets at that time who have since gained international recognition as some of Canada's most respected names: Irving Layton, Frank Scott, and Leonard Cohen.
"We used to meet at poetry readings, cocktail parties and coffee shops, it was very friendly and very stimulating. That started the poetry fire within me."
The 'poetry fire' continued to burn inside Pearson as he moved to Toronto, where he worked as a literary and business journalist and made a living through freelance writing for the Globe and Mail and the Financial Post. He has also worked as a scriptwriter for the National Film Board and written various articles for magazines to earn his keep, but poetry has always been his passion. He now lives in the Muskoka region of Ontario.
Go here to see what people have been saying about Alan's poetry | Go here for the Table of Contents.
ISBN: 978-1-894747-42-4 | WMPub# 1040 | 6" x 9"
136 page trade paperback | $11.95 CDN
What people are saying about Alan's poetry:
Alan Pearson once admitted, "Beauty has always been my goal when writing poetry." It is safe to say he has attained this goal, as unpopular as it might be these days, with poets mumbling under their breaths or bellowing with full lungs, telling trite stories in "platform poems" or losing themselves in intricate linguistic mazes. Alan's work is quite unlike this and quite unlike the man himself. (Note that I am using his first name here, as I believe he would encourage old and new readers alike to do the same; it is not that he is informal in manner, far from it, for he is rather reserved and still rather 'English,' but that his poems are other than that.) The poems are remarkable because all of them are immediately accessible to the attentive reader, for they celebrate the world as we generally perceive it: the attraction of attractive places (Muskoka), the plight of people (Conrad Black), the thrill of airplane travel ("I'm free awhile from multifarious earth"), and the sturdiness of a handy walking stick ("The root that grew inch by inch / as decades came and went"). I could go on, but Alan has done that for me—and for you. Be sure to read the work called "Poems are a Pencil Game" because it manages to skate upon the surface of life yet sound its depths to an amazing degree ... "all thanks to soft black lead and pine / and the patience of a poet."
John Robert Colombo, author and anthologist
Sincerity, faith, wisdom. Is there still room for these words in the clever canyons of contemporary poetry? When we are in search of them, we might well go to Alan Pearson's poetry, a thin gold beaten out of life's duress and ecstasies, a sustenance when we are in need of something beyond the fracas of the times. Pearson remembers the ages, has culled from the past, takes joy in the daily gift and has arrived at the peace so many will hunger to reach. Here is the point of art, to live well by the craft of words and silence.
Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, poet laureate of Toronto
"Poetry he [Pearson] defines as an amusement meant to delight a reader and provide the poet with an excuse to use language. It is the old Audenesque idea of poetry as a game —perhaps The Great Game— and Pearson plays it with zest."
George Woodcock, The Globe and Mail
One recalls with great pleasure the fine shorter poems which distinguished Alan Pearson's 14 Poems (1970) for which he won the Quebec Ministry of Cultural Affairs poetry prize. Since that time Pearson has published sparingly while continuing to produce carefully crafted poems that celebrate with acuity and passion the everyday experience. The present selection gathers a lifetime's thought and dedication to the art of writing.
Michael Gnarowski, professor emeritus, Carleton University
Table of Contents
9 Introduction
NEW POEMS
12 Conrad Black
14 His True Subject: Leonard Cohen
15 Waiting Room
16 Walking Stick
17 Poems are a pencil game
18 How to Look at a Painting
19 Goodbye Denia
20 Florida Afternoon
21 March Day
22 Lake of Bays
24 In the Coffee Shop
26 The Go-between
28 Marriage?
30 Group Portrait
31 Silly Incident
32 A Xmas Gift of Fibrositis
33 February
34 The Mystery
36 Retirement
FLASHING ON ALL FACETS
38 Muskoka
39 Blue Mountain
40 Parry Sound
42 Highway Bus Stop at Twilight
44 Huntsville: Big East River
45 Old Jetty
46 May Days
47 Flying
48 Celia Montales
50 Seedy Poet
52 Haikus
53 Private Eye
54 I will be there
56 Siesta Key, Florida
58 Fellow Passenger
59 Walk to Work
60 Flightpath
61 Father and Son
62 Winter Mood
63 Fall Haikus
64 Postcard from Cuba
65 Lana Paneros
66 African Sketchbook
70 Izis' Photograph of Jacques Prevert
71 To the Palms, the Palms
72 Shabby Documentary
73 The Mother
74 The Trip
75 The Diaries
76 Celebrities
77 To Bed
78 Pub Thoughts from Abroad
80 This Place
81 Waiting
82 Early Spring: Golf Course Road
83 The Waiting Period
84 Sketch of Steven
FREEWHEELING THROUGH GOSSAMER DRAGSTRIPS
88 Poetry
90 The Oldest Enemy
92 Riding High
94 For Do-Do who wanted it
96 Tiger
97 Ode (after Pablo Neruda)
98 Scene From Another Time
100 Night of Jack the Ripper
102 The Girl on the Metro
103 Swifts
104 I went to a lovely party
107 To get there take the boulevard
108 They can make you happy
109 Trina
110 Memo on Nubar Gulbenkian (1896-1972)-a rich man
112 Satyr in a bus full of mini-gyms
113 Spanish Dancer
114 Memories of Denia (Spain)
116 Greece
119 Back home
120 Words
14 POEMS
124 Dead Gull
125 Spring
126 Bush Plane
128 Bus ride
130 Waiting for sleep
131 In the museum
132 May evening
134 Self portrait