Before We Had Words

Words across a Ouija Board: Memory is the mother of the Muses, said the Greeks. What we write are shadows of recollections, fictions growing out of other fictions. But now these words grow out of memory failing, as where and when blanch slowly to perhaps. The two who sheltered from the sudden downpour, hugging close, or woke to each other in the dark, or quarreled hatefully-were they snatches of old stories, or were you once my wife? Death veils you in the features of passers-by, and age makes yellow secrets of our letters, until the past is unalloyed with circumstance, and becomes pure moments of unearned deserving.

Praise for Before We Had Words: "Sheldon Zitner's writing combines energy and wisdom, vigour and experience. In one poem he speaks of an art that, distrusting show, achieves elegance without forgetting 'beginnings and their frugal joys.' His own work delivers just this mixture of gusto and refinement, memory and activity. Staying close to things of the earth and early loves, it lives in the here and now, thinking and dreaming ... This new book grapples with our 'thought-encumbered images' in a poetry that means 'to cherish not to awe.' Its success is our enlightenment and pleasure." A.F. Moritz Praise for The Asparagus Feast: "A wise and learned voice ... accomplished, beautiful, and moving poems." The Globe and Mail "These poems speak to truths overturned and reformed; to the essential contradiction of being alone in the midst of people, and to those peculiar moments that come from a life lived: ordinary in its form but always unique in its quietude." The National Post "A feast indeed it is: rich in language and imagery, delicately flavoured with allusions gleaned from extensive reading and travel, peppered with a mischievous wit." The Malahat Review "The Asparagus Feast generates passion all the more stunning by its reserve, a torment rendered palpable by its tight-lipped presentation." The Fiddlehead ---

Praise for Before We Had Words: "Sheldon Zitner's writing combines energy and wisdom, vigour and experience. In one poem he speaks of an art that, distrusting show, achieves elegance without forgetting ‘beginnings and their frugal joys.' His own work delivers just this mixture of gusto and refinement, memory and activity. Staying close to things of the earth and early loves, it lives in the here and now, thinking and dreaming ... This new book grapples with our ‘thought-encumbered images' in a poetry that means ‘to cherish not to awe.' Its success is our enlightenment and pleasure." A.F. Moritz
Praise for The Asparagus Feast: "A wise and learned voice ... accomplished, beautiful, and moving poems." The Globe and Mail
"These poems speak to truths overturned and reformed; to the essential contradiction of being alone in the midst of people, and to those peculiar moments that come from a life lived: ordinary in its form but always unique in its quietude." The National Post
"A feast indeed it is: rich in language and imagery, delicately flavoured with allusions gleaned from extensive reading and travel, peppered with a mischievous wit." The Malahat Review
"The Asparagus Feast generates passion all the more stunning by its reserve, a torment rendered palpable by its tight-lipped presentation." The Fiddlehead