And Yet

(Paperback)

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A former Poet Laureate of Canada and finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize returns with a wide-ranging new collection of poems. Described as "one of our finest lyric poets" and "part keen-eyed naturalist, part exuberant philosopher," John Steffler returns with a new collection of graceful, resonant poems.

Reviews

Praise forAnd Yetand John Steffler

"The poems often open with vivid details of landscape, wildlife, and season, but tip into the surreal or the whimsical in a way that takes them into the metaphysical realm. The world seems animate, full of mystery. As [Steffler] puts it in one poem, 'Night is full of passageways through which things disappear.'"Toronto Star

"John Steffler always pays tribute to the and-yet, but its reverberations have never been more palpable than they are here, never more poignant.These are poems haunted by material life, the never-ending and-yet of language.And that material lifethe hardened paintbrush, the sleeping dog, the chalkboard, the barns and elmsis itself haunted by the past, the never-ending and-yet of whats present.The metaphysics of this collection are riveting; I feel them in every nerve ending."Sue Sinclair, author ofHeaven's Thieves

"The title and first poem in John Stefflers new collection,And Yet,posits its speaker at the edge of homecoming, hovering and not quite ready for the return. This site is ripe with the potentiality that streams through this collection. Time slithers into and out from its own heartwood andthe poems cant help but lean hard out of their words,shucking and dissolving into shade or light or fur,reassembling somehow into wildness.And how do we break from our practice of naming to stay instead with these moments of our time, the moments we have yet to see and the moments we are seeing This collection deepens that question by actively listening."Sue Goyette, author ofPenelope

"InAnd Yet, John Steffler tenderly enacts a world that is tangling with itselfpast and present, human and more-than-human, personal histories and colonial legacies, walnut bud and walnut table, gratitude and blame. Here, insights are encased in bafflements. Perceptions are caught in the act of morphing. Certainties are haunted by whats still behind you when you turn around.Each poem in these pages is a slim bridge made of watching, not / knowing . . .reading them returned me to strangeness again and again. A wonder of a book."Alayna Munce, author ofWhen I Was Young and In My Prime

Author Bio

JOHN STEFFLER is the author of six books of poetry, including Lookout, which was shorlisted for the Griffin Prize, The Grey Islands, and That Night We Were Ravenous. His novel The Afterlife of George Cartwright won the Smithbooks/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. From 2006 to 2008 he was Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada.