ALONE ON A WINDY RIDGE: I spent the colder days

Friday, February 16, 2007

I spent the colder days

…of this week reading books that I borrowed. These include Immigrant Blues by Goran Simic, Lunar Drift by Marlene Cookshaw, Clinic Day by Diana Fitzgerald Bryden, Souwesto Home by James Reaney, and Point No Point by Jane Munro. This morning I’ll start Paul Auster’s Disappearances.

While I’ve been inside reading, H has been outside, hanging out with the ermine that I’d posted about back in December. It’s living in our junky compost area, which is partially fenced in, and has left holes and tracks all over the yard. What I didn’t know until I saw H’s video is that the ermine has been eating off of my favourite plates!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...: How great! Your ermine looks *a lot* like our ferrets--especially the curious look/sniffing part and the "grabbing food off plate and dashing off" part.; 17/2/07 3:47 PM
Brenda Schmidt said...: Ya, I'm happy it's hanging around.

I'd like to meet your ferrets some day.; 21/2/07 9:14 AM

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"This is a skilled poet having good fun, and inviting us all to join the party." - Shelley A. Leedahl, SaskBooks Reviews. Read more.

"Employing a variety of forms and the culvert stories — who knew? — of numerous people, she digs beneath the obvious roads to find out what keeps the water — the subconscious, the unconscious — flowing smoothly, discovering a variety of things about herself, notably the everyday masks we wear and the aging process we won’t always admit to." - Bill Robertson, The Star Phoenix. Read more.

"For Schmidt is indeed a poet. Readers can expect to encounter many visual and acoustic delights along the way, from internal rhymes to arresting images." - Trevor Cook, The Antigonish Review #196.

"In Grid..., Creighton's Brenda Schmidt turns a colder eye to the landscape than most other Canadian poets." - Jonathan Ball, Winnipeg Free Press. Read more.

"You can just feel the stones rattling off your undercarriage on this Grid." - Bill Robertson, The Star Phoenix. Read more.

"Like the Prairies, this is not a collection that gives itself away: the true beauty of this book lies in subtleties that may not be obvious at first glance." - Emily McGiffin, The Malahat Review. Read more.

"In Grid, moments are approached in their apparent stability only to be swept away in song rife with interruption and fresh stimuli, lending a new perspective. It is as though the familiar ground is an eye glancing back and the reflection only a nodal-point, open to opportunity and play." - Justin Dittrick, SPG Book Reviews. Read more.

"There is grit in these poems, so much that it seems unfair to think of them as nature poems; like the best nature writing, they undo our expectations of nature rather than uphold them." - Tanis MacDonald, Arc Poetry Magazine. Read more.

"In her fourth collection Grid, Schmidt’s wry humour transcends what we have watched heap up in Canada for more than a century—nature poems—balancing in canola fields between the beautiful lure of nature and our curious urge to separate ourselves from disappearing allotments of our own solace. We have wandered “off the grid” but fortunately Schmidt is an entertaining and insightful guide who can still find Li Po in a Dark-eyed Junco, if she has to." - Garry Thomas Morse, Jacket 2. Read more.

"These supple, witty, and incisive poems delineate our relationship to grids and systems both visible and invisible, natural and political." - Judges' citation, Saskatchewan Book Award for Poetry nomination. Jurors: Shawna Lemay, Barbara Nickel, Sharon Thesen.