Destination Mutable [Paperback]

John H. Baillie (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2009 | ISBN-10: 0971746877 | ISBN-13: 978-0971746879 | Edition: 1

Written during a five-year period of life-threatening illness, this collection of 85 poems covers a remarkable range of subjects but always manages to return to thoughts of friendship and nature. Begun as a meditation on mortality, the work gradually changes course and begins to reexamine the world with a new acuity that eschews self-pity and insists on being alert and alive.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Baillie demonstrates a secure yet poignant and quite distinctive artistic point of view." —Allan Brown, Jones Av. (2010)

"Baillie is a poet with a rare voice, whose words – rendered so nakedly on the page – are a potent reminder of the power of poetry to communicate essential truths about life." —Robert M. Abbott, author, Conscious Endeavors

About the Author

John H. Baillie is a writer who has published many short pieces of fiction and poetry. He is the author of Midnight's Delight. He lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Product Details

• Paperback: 120 pages
• Publisher: Green Frigate Books; 1 edition (September 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0971746877
• ISBN-13: 978-0971746879
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,454,482 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Poetry Immutable, January 11, 2010

By 

Branko "Branko" (South Kingstown, Rhode Island United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Destination Mutable (Paperback)

A beautiful and bold realization, Destination Mutable covers a vast range of stark, intensely realized observations. While true that the threat of mortality hangs at the threshold in almost every precisely realized poem here, these often koan-like gems offer new ways to see, to be inspired, and--yes--to live. Highly recommended. As this is Green Frigate Book's first publication of poems, they should be applauded as well--for bringing Baillie's work to surface and for producing such a handsome volume.

5.0 out of 5 stars Leveling from the Heart, August 24, 2009

By 

R. Romanowski (Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Destination Mutable (Paperback)

Facing his own imminent death Russian poet Joseph Brodsky found comfort in the stoic Roman words of Marcus Aurelius. W.B. Yeats spent the long twilight of his life weaving a grand work for the ages. John H. Baillie in his new collection of poetry, Destination Mutable, evokes a down-to-earth and intimate tone while facing a rare and possibly deadly medical disorder; more precisely his work floats just above the earth at the level of the heart.

One cannot read Mr. Baillie''s book at one sitting because of its intensity. It is best taken over a few days. Yet the reader will be drawn back to the book again and again because this is the poetic record of a man living with (and eventually conquering) a tumor on the heart. This is the record of life thriving in the fierce glare of death.

Destination Mutable is biographical poetry so the book''s Forward must be read; but this prosaic information augments as imaginative descant, as ever-present shadow, to the poetry.
From '"Three Variations on an Icon: Blackbeard''s Flag"':
'...upon a field of black
a white skeleton stands,
in his right hand,
he holds an hour glass,
in his left a spear
piercing a red heart
with three red blood-drops
falling...'.

Admirably Mr. Baillie kept writing poems while bravely searching for meaning in his illness. As part of his struggle he seems to meet Eros in many guises: a magician''s assistant, blocks of marble brought to life, memories of love. The brush with death may be erotic' and is often humorous:
Due to a rare, unfortunate genetic abnormality
brought on by efflorescence
Mr. K''s normal personal magnetism
manifested itself in an unseen cloud of electrons'....
(From "'Life''s Like That'")
Or:
The elusive neighbor, with the perfectly
cropped lawn, who whenever you''re away
seems to be leaning over your back fence
and eating the tops off your trees'....
(From "'Indistinctly Extinct'")

Eventually the poet seems to work out a type of spirituality (the floating as noted), perhaps in tension between the present life of crisis and that unknown which is still to come. There is in this book much hard-won hope as in '"Waking Up Gautauma"':
Enlightened by a dream,
I could not help
but be happy

one day

Mr. Baillie is also the author of a book of short stories, Midnight''s Delight (called "'Dr. Who meets Monty Python'" in another review). And he also reportedly has a full-length novel in the works. May he prosper in his prose, keep his hard won health, and eventually have time for more poetry.