Jean Rivard - University of British Columbia

however, as Gardner's speakers look into
themselves to find something more happy
than limbo (although there are troubles
enough), and look back to find an earlier life
located far beyond the boundaries of Newfoundland:
a life, in fact, across the ocean.
England is the setting for many of the
highly descriptive poems in Talking to
Ghosts, and English elegiac and pastoral
poets must be numbered amongst the
ghosts most frequently (if often anonymously)
engaged in the dialogues that
comprise the collection. As might be
expected of descriptive poetry in the elegiac
and pastoral traditions, the descriptions
offered are dominantly realistic, but unexpected
neometaphysical conjunctions of
otherwise realistic images emerge upon
occasion. In "Funerals," for example,
Antarctic whales are juxtaposed with a
garbage dump, which in turn receives
unexpected treatment when it is defined as
a place for "pet after pet" to be "tossed
out." Similarly, the desk of a dead man, in
"Reposing," is unexpectedly transformed
into a casket—one resting on "wheels."
Sometimes the dialogues are immediately
personal in significance ("Spelsbury
House"); sometimes, however, the speaker
is joined by others in acts of communal
commemoration ("Reading 'Spain' to the
Students"). On other occasions, the dialogues
involve extrapolations into the past
in an attempt to understand what another
once experienced ("Piano Quintet,"
"Walberswick Pier Head, 1888").
Most often, as might be expected from
the title of the collection, the dialogues are
melancholy in tone, but some are playful
("White Point, Trinity Bay") while others
are violent ("Fen Ditton"). At all times,
however, the dialogues are dialogues, and
ghosts from the past are invoked only to be
connected to the speaker's present world
("Wood-side Ferry," "Revisiting"), or to the
future as well ("Archbishop," "Winter View of
Liverpool Cathedral," "Blundellsands, 1985").
Unifying the collection are frequent references
to ecclesiastical subjects. Gardner
describes or makes reference to particular
churches ("Winter View of Liverpool
Cathedral," "Revisiting"), but also to
church services ("Four Mile Point"), holy
days ("Waiting on Christmas Sunday,"
"Palm Sunday, Thornton"), and ecclesiastical
figures ("Archbishop"). Echoes of hymn
are heard ("Wirral"), and also of Scripture
("Ghosts"). If Gardner is an elegiac pastoralist,
he is also, and often at the same
time, an ecclesiastical poet, and this conjunction,
when it occurs, makes many of
his elegiac pastorals distinctive.
Not all of the poems are specifically or
primarily ecclesiastical, however, for the
topical range of the collection is extensive.
If poems such as "Woodside Ferry" and
"Revisiting" are elegies for speakers' earlier
selves, others commemorate particular
individuals ("Memorial Service," "Elegy for
William Mathias", "Intensive Care," "Old
Haymarket, 1955"). There are also elegies
for animals ("For Percy," "For Oscar in
Easter Week," and "1895"), together with
elegies for inanimate objects. Bridges, in
particular, receive attention ("11 november,
1983," "Levelling"), and their archetypal significance
ensures that Gardner's descriptions
of them, like his other descriptions
throughout the volume, serve ends beyond
description itself.
Interrupted Voices
Gary Geddes
Girl by the Water. Turnstone $12.95
Raymond Souster
Old Bank Notes. Oberon $23·95/$ιι.95
Reviewed by Alexander M. Forbes
In Girl by the Water, Gary Geddes continues
the formal and thematic explorations
that have long been identified with his
name. Dramatic monologues of different
speakers are collected either into inter-
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