Point No Point : Poems

Point No Points title comes from a landform an actual point on the west coast of Vancouver Island, which seems, when approached from the other side, to be no point at all and it alerts us to the fact that Jane Munros poems are situated in a deep sense. They live in situ in the way they inhabit their native place, intimate with its mists, its mosses and lichens, with the salmonberry and false lily-of-the-valley of their ecosystem. They are also situated temporally, evoking sharply etched memories, visions, and dreams: a real-time visit to her fathers boatyard, a dream visit with her mother from a time before the poet was conceived, a flashback to the sixties rendered in extreme close-up. By their musical attunement and the acuity of the focus, they demonstrate how such deep situation may come about, how we might bring language to the task of living in a way which is fully present. In the long culminating poem, Moving to a Colder Climate, Munro brings all these elements into play, summoning her fathers bold obstreperous ghost to be present as a new house is built situated in this language. Her gifts as a poet acuity, candour, musicality make Point No Point a work of unforgettable witness.