Glad & Sorry Seasons - Paperback

by Catherine Chandler (Author)

The second full-length collection from sonneteer and formalist poet Catherine Chandler, Glad and Sorry Seasons brings together new suites of poems--on grief, recovery, the deadly sins, and the virtues of faith, hope, and love--to meditate on those polarities of light and dark, joy and sorrow, that illuminate and cloud our lives by turn. With subjects ranging from Alzheimer's to Edward Hopper's Automat, in handsomely crafted stanzas and metres, and including translations from Qu becois and Latin American poets, Glad and Sorry Seasons is a stunning and learned offering from a poet unmistakably committed to form.

Waiting

For the man in the Intensive Care Unit waiting room,
H pital Notre-Dame, Montr al, June 2012

Some nights I've seen
a slice of silver slink across this room
I now call home,
above my makeshift bed--a rickety chair
beside the snack machine.
Close by, the elevators whirr and beep.
I cannot, dare not, drift asleep,
let down my guard,
inviting shoulder taps, a whispered Sir,
or dreams of her
once-vivid eyes that stare & stare & stare,
dull, distant, hard.
Thus I will will her through another day.
Make crazy compromises. Pray.

Author Biography

Catherine Chandler's poetry, translations and essays have been published in numerous journals and anthologies in North America, the U.K. and Australia. Winner of the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, she is the author of Lines of Flight (Able Muse Press, 2011), a collection of sonnets, This Sweet Order (White Violet Press, 2012) and two chapbooks. Glad and Sorry Seasons is her second full-length collection. Recently retired from McGill University where she lectured in the Department of Translation Studies, Catherine resides in Saint-Lazare, Quebec.