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Poetry Canadian

Intimate Letters

The Invisible World Is in Decline, Book VII

by (author) Bruce Whiteman

Publisher
ECW Press
Initial publish date
Oct 2014
Category
Canadian, Love
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781770412125
    Publish Date
    Oct 2014
    List Price
    $18.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781770906181
    Publish Date
    Oct 2014
    List Price
    $14.99

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Description

 

Intimate Letters comprises the seventh book of an ongoing long poem in prose called The Invisible World Is in Decline. Its title borrows from a string quartet by Leo Jánacek, a profoundly emotional piece written late in the composer’s life when he had fallen in love with a younger woman. It also points towards the intimacy of letters themselves, the visible pieces that make up language. This collection begins with love poems, then moves to a section (“Wretched in This Alone”) dominated by loss. The “Invisible Ghazals” which follow take language and emotions more deeply into a sense of dispossession, a landscape of the heart characterized by feeling unmoored. “Desire,” the final poem, and the only piece in conventional poetic lines, attempts to rescue the heart from bleakness by proposing that passion does survive even the most difficult and demanding experiences, and “runs through our days like / music.”

 

About the author

Bruce Whiteman is a Canadian poet and writer living in Los Angeles. He is the author of many books of poetry, including Visible Stars: New and Selected Poems (1995), Tristia, and XXIV Love Poems (2002). He regularly writes reviews for Canadian and American journals, and his scholarly books include Lasting Impressions: A Short History of English Publishing in Quebec (1994) and J.E.H. Macdonald (1995).

Bruce Whiteman's profile page