Into the Early Hours

ISBN: 1551924986

Author: Hunter, Aislinn

Condition: Used

In Into the Early Hours, Aislinn Hunter avoids the common poetic mistake of focusing too closely on self-inflicted emotions. Her vision is grounded in history and place, especially Canada and "that green country," Ireland. In poems ranging from the Irish diaspora to the "drunken swagger" of the wild Fraser River of British Columbia, she uses captivating images to ground her view of the world. A piece of coal is a heart; a sandbox, an open grave; a garden, a fecund, mysterious locus of language. At times her descriptions are strikingly clear: the bull, "the anvil of his head butting down," or the foothills that "ache upwards, out of themselves, / turning, in the distance, to mountains," or the "winters warmed by the black lung of the furnace." A number of real-life characters also make an appearance in these poems: Yeats and other Irish poets, Jung, Mendel, Monet, the Panchen Lama. Aislinn Hunter as a young poet already has the tools--the assured language, the vision, the wide-ranging interest in her world--and she has filled Into the Early Hours with many fine poems. --Mark Frutkin