A Newer Wilderness

by Roseanne Carrara

Life of St. Edmund has been set into verse by Robin J. Norris. The translation which follows is the poet’s.

  “Notes on Immigration”: For “the professor my husband writes

  about,” see “At the Offices of the Perishable Press” by Blaise Moritz from Crown and Ribs (Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 2007).

  The lines on the mynah are inspired by Wayne Grady’s Bringing

  Back the Dodo (McClelland & Stewart, 2006).

  “The Course of the Renovations, i”: For the past few years, as

  Transformation ago has been underway, the museum has

  offered only a limited selection of its permanent collection for

  public viewing. “The Thomson gifts” are the 2,000 works of

  art donated to the museum from the private collection of Mr.

  Kenneth Thomson, the largest gift made from a private donor

  to a Canadian cultural institution. The final painting refer-

  enced is Frederick H. Varley’s Dharana, c.1932.

  “The Course of the Renovations, ii”: The extension to the

  Royal Ontario Museum is known as The Crystal, and the ini-

  tiative, Renaissance rom.

  “A Newer Wilderness”: The speaker refers to Ray Bradbury’s “A

  Sound of Thunder.”

  “During the Spring Dandelion Rush in Irvine, California”: This

  piece incorporates and transforms lines from the closure of Book

  One of William Cowper’s The Task, lines 749-774, beginning,

  “God made the country, and man made the town.”

  “A Child’s Garden” references Robert Frost’s “A Girl’s Garden.”

  — 108 —

  “Lazarus Speaks in Front of Lemieux’s Lazare, 1941”: i.e.

  Jean-Paul Lemieux, Lazare, 1941. Art Gallery of Ontario.

  “A Newer Wilderness (ii)”: The speaker responds to a book

  review of Dennis Lee’s UN. “UN: An Uncanny Unraveling,”

  Karen Solie, The Globe and Mail, (Toronto), April 12, 2003.

  “The Masters of the Country House Poems”: This poem incor-

  porates and transforms lines from poems considered part of or

  critical of the Country House tradition outlined by Raymond

  Williams in The Country and the City. Some of these are: William Shakespeare, Macbeth I.vi., Thomas Carew, “To Saxham,” Robert Herrick, “A Panegerick to Sir Lewis Pemberton,” Charles

  Cotton, “A Journey into the Peak: To Sir Aston Cokayne,” Ben

  Jonson, “To Penshurst,” Andrew Marvell, “Upon Appleton

  House,” and Derek Walcott, “The Star-Apple Kingdom.”

  “Opera Week in Radio”: On September 12, 2006, the Four

  Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts opened with a perform-

  ance of Wagner’s Das Rheingold. The Canadian Opera Company,

  under the direction of Richard Bradshaw, presented the entire

  cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen, over the course of the week.

  Howard Dick hosted the complete coverage of the series on cbc

  Radio Two. Atom Egoyan is the director mentioned by last name

  in the second stanza.

  “The Restoration of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker”: At some

  point in the late 1990’s at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Simon Marmion’s The Mass of Saint Gregory, ca.1460–65, hung in a gallery opposite the Master of the Kress Epiphany’s The

  Expulsion of the Money-Changers, ca. 1480-1490. Some of the ital-icized phrases are from “Plucked from Extinction; 60 Years

  Since Ivory-billed Specimen Seen, Birders Expected to Descend

  on Arkansas Forests,” Megan Ogilvie, Toronto Star, April 29, 2005. There are also echoes here of the title poem of Susan Stewart’s The Forest, (University of Chicago Press, 1995).

  — 109 —

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The sequence Kenotaphion appeared in its entirety in the Malahat Review 143 (2003) as co-winner of the journal’s bienni-al long poem prize. “During the Spring Dandelion Rush in

  Irvine, California” and “Surveillance” also appeared in the

  Malahat Review 137 (2001), the former being nominated for a National Magazine Award in Canada.

  “The Wife of Pilate” and “Certain Disappearances” appeared in

  The Fiddlehead 215 (2002).

  “Surveillance” and “During the Spring Dandelion Rush in

  Irvine, California” were also published as an artist’s book, enti-

  tled A Newer Wilderness which featured original linocuts by Blaise Moritz (Urban Farm and Philomel Dada, 2000).

  “Surveillance,” “Certain Disappearances,” “The Wife of Pilate,”

  “During the Spring Dandelion Rush in Irvine, California,” and

  “A Newer Wilderness” appeared in a small-press chapbook, also

  entitled A Newer Wilderness (Philomel Dada, 2002).

  Thanks to the Toronto Arts Council and to the Canada Council

  for the Arts for generous support of this project.

  Thanks to Paul Vermeersch, Mike O’Connor, Dan Varrette,

  Gillian Urbankiewicz, and Alysia Shewchuk for preparing and

  presenting this work to the public.

  And thanks, as ever, to my husband Blaise, and to our children.

  “For nought but Love / can answer Love, and render Bliss

  secure.” – Thomson

  — 111 —

  Document Outline

  Front cover

  newer wilderness

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  I

  II

  III

  EPILOGUE

  NOTES

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Back cover