New Releases by David Zieroth

BC poet David Zieroth’s creative journey, still unfolding after more than fifty years, comes into brilliant focus in this revelatory retrospective. Gathered with meticulous care and arranged chronologically, this vital collection reflects the unique voice and ever-evolving style of Canadian poet David Zieroth over more than half a century of acclaimed work. From early meditations on his rural Prairie childhood to the moving consideration of family and history in the previously unpublished poem at the book’s end, Zieroth allows imagery rooted in daily life to guide him in unexpected directions, revealing moments that illuminate the otherwise hidden confluence of mind and world. As first here and then far shows, Zieroth’s curiosity-charged poems have always possessed a translucent directness. Motion and stillness meet, whether the view is from one of his many international voyages or simply from his North Vancouver balcony, as in the evocatively titled recent book watching for life. And his language has gathered momentum over the years, becoming more streamlined as it sheds convention and takes on a new lyricism. An essential document of a long and endlessly inventive life in words, first here and then far is a worthy testament to the energy and subtle insight of a poet who remains at the height of his powers.

From Governor General’s Award-winning poet David Zieroth comes a new collection about history, connections and travels in Europe. Impromptu English lessons in a North Vancouver coffee shop, and subsequent trips to Bratislava, bring the speaker in these poems a warmer appreciation of friends and family as well as a wider vision of the interplay of folklore and culture, and of the human-made and natural world. These poems speak of affections that cross borders—geographical, historical and interpersonal—and that show us ways to love each other. Here are villages, people and landscapes in Slovakia, a post-Communist country with a complicated past and present, where Zieroth seeks what unites us across barriers. He brings this deeper sense of connection home with him, even when a part of his new sense of self and others lingers along the Danube.

we climb down the manhole / where history waits, and we can read / its layers or at least imagine them From a balcony overlooking an urban back lane, a poet watches those walking below – their identities unknown and yet grasped through real and imagined evidence of foibles and personal inclinations, details of habit that reflect the strangers’ inner selves, humanity in all its weaknesses, illnesses, and propensities. In watching for life David Zieroth ponders questions about how to live and how to continue. The poems reach out in imagining the lives of others, and the poet himself is watched in turn. Zieroth conjures the history of his environment and the people who pass through it, reminding us of “the place we occupy / unfinished within ourselves” and our hunger to locate ourselves in the strangers we encounter. Intimate and observant, watching for life features poetic reflections on men, women, children, crows and gulls, pigeons, rain and snow, patched pavement, delivery trucks, night, and time.

The title poem in David Zieroth’s the bridge from day to night follows the speaker across the Second Narrows Bridge to North Vancouver, a well-worn moment in a daily commute that opens a window into the sublime: “from the apex / of the bridge with traffic flying / I look directly into / their deepest clefts.” Such moments occur throughout the collection, as Zieroth explores the resonance built from layers of such ordinary moments as they accumulate throughout a lifetime—indistinct and imperceptible as they occur, but creating unseen undercurrents through memory and time. In this temporal landscape, the natural world becomes a touchstone, both entangled in and standing apart from the speaker’s internal narrative: “I brought from that forming hour a / precise smell of foliage: funeral wreaths / bore an acid scent.” Shifting fluidly through time, the speaker grows from a child to understand, reflect and then outlive his parents. Finally, the collection lights on the incongruities and contradictions in death: “still later I kick his flattened corpse / to the gutter, and it skids on concrete / a broken valise, weightless / on this segment of the journey.” With his characteristic humour, subtlety and ability to find transcendence in the everyday, Zieroth traces the delicate strands connecting the most minute and familiar details to the most profound mysteries, giving voice to the unknowable.

The Wind has mysteriously caused the death of all people on earth--except for Zoo. As the last remaining person on earth, he must deal with this extraordinary situation, and the result is a series of dreams, shocks, hallucinations, events, explorations and the final outcome in the light of his changing understanding.

David Zieroth''s Albrecht Dürer and me, an autobiographical travelogue spanning the author’s journeys through central Europe, explores the transformative effect of dislocation. Inspired by and responding to art and music, history and war, architecture and place, this collection unearths knowledge that can only be realized by leaving home. Throughout the book, the observant eye of a visitor witnesses the layering of history and the contemporary, and contemplates the juxtaposition of the practical aspects of travelling ("noise") with emotional and spiritual evolution ("‘Nude self-portrait’"). Responding to greats such as W.H. Auden, James Joyce and Albrecht Dürer, the speaker expresses how viewing foreign artwork or hearing unfamiliar music can spark a new awareness, not only of international culture, but of the expression of life and the human condition. The poems temper the high with the low, reflecting the many dualities of wanderlust. Stately homes are contrasted with war-scarred architecture, and sleepless nights, crowded trains and missed connections offset literature and symphony. "Berlin Album" reflects on the stains the past has left on modern-day Germany: "church bells at 6:00 p.m. / from spires on Borsigstrasse / pass an iron sound through rippled windows / so my body vibrates, and remembers / bullet holes in stone walls along the Spree." "on first hearing Mahler’s Fifth" echoes that musical composition to mirror and evoke life’s song and "weeds grew while I was away" describes the shock of returning home with the expectation of stasis only to find that things have changed. Attentive, humble and expertly crafted, Albrecht Dürer and me is a travel diary rife with evocative image, sensory detail and eloquent reflection, narrated with an honest, mature voice.

The November Optimist is almost a love story. Combining fiction, observation and anecdote, its male narrator conjures a dialogue with a woman-his imagined counterpart, his willing or unwilling muse who sometimes lends insight, sometimes remains contrary and elusive. Full of jaunty humanity and black humour, our narrator registers ironies in a light-hearted manner when bemusements arise from his fully engaged citizen-walkabouts and caffeine fantasies. Ordinary events (driving and parking, walking and watching) are transformed by minute representation into something of almost surreal importance. The conversation extends beyond the woman to the city itself, to rain and seasonal change, to books and the escape they offer, the ways they inform what is possible and what is daily. Clouds and quays, neighbours and strangers absorb our narrator, as does fast time in both his city and in himself in this flâneur''s look around.

Selected for Poetry in Transit 2009 The Fly in Autumn is a nuanced work with an absurdist twist in which recognizable landscapes--of North Vancouver quays and piers and harbour fog--are sometimes irrevocably altered by water-light into places of the mind alive with the hundred thousand thoughts everyone collects in a day. Risking unease, using language both tender and ironic, Zieroth''s poems range from the cockiness of flight, from Dick and Jane readers to insurance clerks and blind nurses, and to the inevitability of decline. Still, the poet remains alert to the re-emergence of his boyhood hope: to be brave, to ship out, to learn to sleep on waves.

A book-length poem blending the time of the narrator''s childhood with his modern life

Crows Do Not Have Retirement, David Zieroth''s sixth book of poems, explores the many lives of the spirit and the flesh: lives that challenge, bewilder and excite. With the fluidity of language and sharpness of image that he is known for, Zieroth voyages through the conflicting worlds of dream and everyday life, exploring feelings of extreme self-irony, honesty, jubilation and terror.

How I Joined Humanity at Last, David Zieroth''s fifth book of poems, explores the mid-life road to renewal and tells the story of one man''s journey toward compassion. Zieroth''s work delves deeply into the issues that affect all of us, from relationships between children and parents and "the old blood turbulence/ of families, tribes," to the day-to-day thoughts of working life:"I want a lateral transfer/into the position of office enchanter./Think of the power/I''ll add to my workload." And beyond these concerns he also examines the roles of spirit and imagination in our daily lives: "The function of the individual/...is to provide the lightning strike/ to matter." How I Joined Humanity at Last evokes the clarity of Zieroth''s first book, Clearings, but it also reaches a new level of maturity and depth. His poetry is concerned with inwardness, with loss and longing, with imagination and memory, and ultimately with dream work that returns us to ourselves and to a sense of community. The voice that emerges is as strong as it is haunting and compelling.