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Poetry Canadian

Winter Cranes

Poems

by (author) Chris Banks

Publisher
ECW Press
Initial publish date
Sep 2011
Category
Canadian
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781770410183
    Publish Date
    Sep 2011
    List Price
    $18.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781770901032
    Publish Date
    Sep 2011
    List Price
    $12.95

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Description

 

In Asian folklore cranes symbolize longevity, immortality, and good fortune. In Winter Cranes, his third collection, award–winning poet Chris Banks conjures these birds when he sees herons near his home towards the end of a long and difficult winter.

For the poet, cranes as a dominant image represent the gaps that exist between what we see and what we feel. His poems explore the impermanence of our modern lives — how our identities are shaped by the past and the present, memory and experience, the physical and the metaphysical. Winter Cranes shows Banks to be an uncompromising poet determined to understand his experience of a world constantly changing around him.

 

About the author

Chris Banks is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Midlife Action Figure (ECW Press, 2019). His first full-length collection, Bonfires (Nightwood Editions, 2003) was awarded the Jack Chalmers Award for Poetry by the Canadian Authors’ Association in 2004. Bonfires was also a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for best first book of poetry in Canada. His poetry has appeared in The New Quarterly, Arc Poetry Magazine, The Antigonish Review, Event, The Malahat Review, GRIFFEL, American Poetry Journal, PRISM International, among other publications. He lives in Waterloo, Ontario.

Chris Banks' profile page

Excerpt: Winter Cranes: Poems (by (author) Chris Banks)

 

Darkening

 

The simple joy of riding with good friendsin a car coming back from a barn danceon the edge of a great lake in mid-March,driving through falling snow on blizzardingcountry roads, past farms, silos, cattle barnsrecessed in deep shadows as Stand By Mespills from the radio. But on that nightour car hit black ice and skittered acrossthe road’s slick surface like a water bug— twenty-odd yards — before coming to restin a snowbank beside a farmer’s house.A man appeared out of the dark, walkingdown his laneway. He asked if anyonewas hurt. Are you okay? Seeing the carwas undamaged, he said he could tow itout with his tractor. I remember thatnight walking up the road, a hundred yardsor more, in the moonless dark, without somuch as a flare or a flashlight to wave downpassing cars, wondering why my friendsand I had survived the crash. Wonderingwhy I was not dead. I can still see myselfstanding impatiently, wind barrelingacross fields, over snow fences, the coldlicking raw the flesh beneath my jacket,trying to hail the drivers of three carsnot bothering to stop, not quite certainwhether they saw a figure half-glimpsedin the helixing snow at that late hour,a messenger risen up from the ground,to warn them of some impending hazarduntil too late they found an old tractorupon the road. And what I rememberof that night will not call back anyonefrom the past. Not the vehicles swervingto carve a wide groove in a winter fieldcrusted with thin ice and eddying snow.Not the farmer on the tractor cursing,his breath rising, a white scar, mixing inplumes of diesel smoke in the chilly air.Not even my younger self, who I seestanding roadside like an apparitionturning his body to stare back downthe dark hallway of a moment ago.

 

Editorial Reviews

 

“Banks writes complex, nuanced lines of narrative verse . . . He’s a maestro with the poetry of physical objects.” — Quill & Quire

“These poems convey meaning through evocative images rather than ponderous philosophizing.” — Toronto Star