 [ Large Image ] | John Stokes’ Horse Peter Sanger 2012 / Poetry / $21.95 9781554471133 / Trade paper / 128 pp One of the great privileges of running a literary publishing house is that of working with particular writers over time, helping them to shape their voice and vision and to foster a readership. One such writer intrinsically associated with Gaspereau Press is the poet and essayist Peter Sanger. Building on the themes of his 2006 collection Aiken Drum, Sanger’s new volume of poems takes its title from the subject of an engraving by Newfoundland printmaker David Blackwood—a simple wooden horse carved by a Cape Freels man in 1907 as a gift for his grandson. In the figure of John Stokes’ horse, Sanger locates an imaginative gesture requiring the suspension of disbelief, for child and adult alike—a winged mount into a world where myth and memory mix. Looking at language, memory and art through the lens of language presents the very sort of riddle on which Sanger’s poetics thrive. As well as the title sequence, the book features a section composed of object poems (“Fishing for Jade”) generally expressing a preoccupation with light—shadows and reflections, signals, moon, water—and a more topical section (“Civics”) which assails the present state of public discourse in a tone and cadence reminiscent of T.S. Eliot’s great modernist poem, The Waste Land. The book also includes a short essay (“Leaping Time”) which combines memories, childhood books and equine lore to provide a sort of mirror to John Stokes’ horse. These poems evoke, in Sanger’s words, “imagination’s creative energy, immanent in time and yet timeless, evidence of love, devotion and patience, evidence that by seeing art through its eyes we see more clearly through our own.” To purchase this title: Add it to your cart | Other Books by this Author |  | Sea Run: Notes on John Thompson’s Stilt Jack Peter Sanger 2023 / Literary Criticism Canadian Poetry / $28.95 CAN 9781554472581 / Trade paper / 144 pp |  | Biorachan Road Peter Sanger 2022 / Essay / $150.00 CAN Fine / 22 pp |  | Odysseus Asleep: Uncollected Sequences, 1994-2019 Peter Sanger 2019 / Canadian Poetry / $21.95 CAN 9781554472048 / Trade paper / 128 pp |  | Lightfield: The Photography of Thaddeus Holownia Peter Sanger 2018 / Photography, Essays, Canadian Art / $24.95 CAN 9781554471775 / Trade paper / 112 pp |  | Of Things Unknown: Critical Essays, 1978–2005 Peter Sanger 2015 / Literary Criticism / $34.95 CAN 9781554471508 / Trade paper / 368 pp |  | Oikos Peter Sanger 2014 / Essay / $9.95 CAN 9781554471256 / Pamphlet / 16 pp |  | Fireship: Early Poems, 1965–1991 Peter Sanger 2013 / Poetry / $25.95 CAN 9781554471218 / Trade paper / 192 pp |  | Through Darkling Air: The Poetry of Richard Outram Peter Sanger 2010 / Biography / $65.95 CAN 9781554470617 / Hardcover / 512 pp |  | The Stone Canoe: Two Lost Mi’kmaq Texts Peter Sanger, Elizabeth Paul, Alan Syliboy 2007 / Literary Criticism / $29.95 CAN 9781554470433 / Trade paper / 192 pp |  | Aiken Drum Peter Sanger 2006 / Poetry / $19.95 CAN 9781554470143 / Trade paper / 144 pp |  | Aiken Drum Peter Sanger 2006 / Poetry / $49.95 CAN 9781554470150 / Fine / 144 pp |  | White Salt Mountain: Words in Time Peter Sanger 2005 / Books & reading / $59.95 CAN 9781554470037 / Fine / 240 pp |  | White Salt Mountain: Words in Time Peter Sanger 2005 / Books & reading / $27.95 CAN 9781554470044 / Trade paper / 240 pp |  | Spar: Words in Place Peter Sanger 2002 / Books & reading / $21.95 CAN 9781894031547 / Trade paper / 112 pp | Spar: Words in Place Peter Sanger 2002 / Books & reading / $49.95 CAN 9781894031554 / Fine / 112 pp |  | Divisions of the Heart: Elizabeth Bishop and the Art of Memory and Place Sandra Barry, Peter Sanger, Gwendolyn Davies 2001 / Essays / $32.95 CAN 9781894031318 / Trade paper / 336 pp |  | Kerf Peter Sanger 2001 / Poetry / $4.95 CAN 9781894031530 / Pamphlet / 24 pp |
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