Choosing to live a life on land instead of on or near the sea is a common theme in several poems from Charles Bruce’s 1952 Governor General’s Award winner The Mulgrave Road. Bruce is never entirely clear about why a life on terra firma should be privileged over one lived on water, but what is masterful about his treatment of the subject here are the ways in which he establishes, then modulates, the binary opposition of the two elements. It’s an achievement in sound and structure that younger or even more established poets might pay attention to or perhaps even emulate.

Bruce begins by sharing his bias towards a farmer’s life in language which underscores the reliability and predictable strength of the land—established first in the internal rhyme of the opening lines, i.e. built/hills/will—then later in the description of hills as containing “certain strength” and the solidity of “native stone”. The sea, by contrast is “blowing salt…flung to sting/The trusting flesh,” in a rocking iambic pentameter that reinforces the uncertain vagaries of wind and rain and ocean storm.

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posted by Arc on January 23, 2009 permalink | comments
cats: Features
tags: Charles Bruce | David Kosub | poetry | poets