Bamboo Church (Hugh MacLennan Poetry) [Mass Market Paperback]

Ricardo Sternberg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2003 | Series: Hugh MacLennan Poetry

From Two Wings: She would drift into the kitchen trailing fragments of a hymn that spoke of God, a river, the pair of golden wings that would be hers on Judgement Day and were you to look at her then you might well decide your best bet for a meal would be to eat out: she was blind and appeared a little lost in her tile and linoleum kingdom. But she vaguely addressed the garlic, the onion, the tomato and between her hands rubbed a sprig of rosemary over olive oil. A fragrance then arose and you decided you had best sit down. And you did. Did you fall asleep? Did you dream? You awoke to the smart snap of sails: the billowing of a tablecloth. She returned and a generous bowl was placed in front of you. Then she crossed her arms and waited: her prayer done, your eating was its Amen.If "Map of Dreams" ended with the poet unable to reach his dreamt island, here he returns to the world around him and finds it full: a blind cook clattering in her kitchen, a great-uncle raising birds behind locked doors, lovers writing to each other out of touch and out of synch. He sees as well a world riven by magic: Noah's wife and her tears, a broom yearning for a dance, and an angel inventing the blues. Like the mime in Marcel, "Bamboo Church" sets a lavish table 'in the house of the hungry'.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Sternberg sets in motion a most remarkable array of agents: birds, brujos, quarks, carrots, and Cyril of Thessalonika ... among them lovers who trapeze through a poetry of formal concentration and assuredness. Bamboo Church is a wonderful collection; full of play, and energy, and delight, it draws together under one roof satire that has tang, argument that is sinuous and subversive, and stories both open and true." Robert Finley, author of The Accidental Indies /// "Sternberg's poems inhabit that rare place where metaphors dissolve, where dream makes a tablecloth into a sail and a beating heart becomes two diverging roads where the traveller doesn't choose but takes both. When it appears that he may concede and fall back on comparison as ornament or illustration, as in much contemporary poetry, the comparison becomes an undebatable fact of the poem. So adamant is Sternberg about maintaining the truth of comparison and the falsehood of frivolous metaphor that he brutalizes universal cliches with a profound humour: a camel is cast out of heaven for failing the needle test, an angel joins the circus, an ant becomes a farmer then a tractor - not as a comparison but as a fact. What a delight to watch these compassionate comedies deconstruct a figure of speech into speech itself, to know that magic still lives beyond the realm of lies." Greg Keeler, author of six collections of poetry, received Montana's Governor's Award in the Humanities in 2001/// "Bamboo Church is a celebration of the sacred and sensual things of this earth. Ricardo Sternberg is a poet of memory, "of those stubborn afternoons [that] refuse to move." Sometimes he returns us to the green and easy world of his Brazilian childhood with its exotics: the brujo, the blind cook, and the aunts and uncles dancing samba. Other times he recovers the blue world of Greece with its "switchbacks" of mountain paths and histories. He can also inhabits a surreal world of the mind conjuring "the idea of broth and of spoons in the house of the hungry." Able to write on almost any subject from thumbs to ants and Spinoza, he writes with humor and grace, both exiled and at home in the world of language." Rosemary Sullivan, author of Labyrinth of Desire: Women, Passion and Romantic Obsession

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 64 pages
• Publisher: Carleton Univ Pr (April 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0773525661
• ISBN-13: 978-0773525665
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.1 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,119,045 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.