Books
by Barbara Pelman
“Many of the poems in this collection are rooted in Jewish tradition: the prophet Isaiah’s words of comfort; the rabbinical story of the Lost Princess, that angel and her counterpart, the Angel Duma. Pelman takes us to difficult places—the dissolution of a marriage, caring for a parent with dementia. But she doesn’t leave us there, waiting. Using the power of words to map a route out, A Brief and Endless Sea pulls us toward life in all of its vibrant details—the simple beauty of a small garden of tomatoes and roses, the pleasures of teaching poetry, long walks with a grandson, and encounters with spirituality.”
– Caitlin Press
“The collection’s overall style is exactly what one could want from a book about travel and self-discovery; there are poetic forms from many different cultures, such as centos, glosas, fugues, and haibun—all well executed. One prevalent poetic philosophy that runs throughout this collection, to my great pleasure, was a flair typically associated with Japanese arts. The poems are skillfully connected to one another, being ‘bridged’ in a wonderfully renga-esque way. There are also several haibun scattered throughout, and mentions of kintsugi and wabi sabi. While this style is noticeable, it is by no means heavy-handed, and is a great foundation on which Pelman builds her beautiful collection.”
– Skylar Kay
“Lyrical poems map the reconstruction of a woman’s life after an exodus from a twenty year marriage. Pelman takes this all-too common sorrow and places it in the natural world. The poems trace a conscious reconstruction of self: from a narrow place of limitations through a metaphorical desert, towards joy, the eventual promised land. In the process of creating and refining the poem itself, she has found a parallel healing of the spirit. “If words could build a world, like love / one stone would be enough.”
– Ekstasis Editions, 2005
“These poems, spare and nuanced, explore the borrowed rooms we inhabit in personal relationships: the temporary homes of marriage and parenting; the personas we carry for a little while and must ultimately abandon. In tight and unsentimental poems, Barbara Pelman grieves the death of a father, notes the changing dynamics of mothers and daughters, watches the doors irrevocably close on a marriage, and delights in the temporal beauty surrounding her: the simple splendour of Garry oak and hawthorn, arbutus branches bent to the shape of wind, and the stutter of shoreline.”
– Ronsdale Press
“What do you want, at this tail end of your life.
What is still possible?”
– From “Known and Strange Things”, Narrow Bridge