That Other Beauty

An exquisitely musical and meditative new voice in Canadian poetry.

In her debut collection, Karen Enns’ focus is the beauty present to us in almost every moment, however mundane or apparently lost. Her argument is that the act of attention itself is the most fundamental of these beauties.

And when the rooms were bare and windowless,

and the winds came with their black rain and the darkness

and the coats on nails like frameless men,

the pockets hollow-mouthed, I wanted this:

to see the shape of things completely,

every darkness, every rise and fall, small breath.
? from Confession

That Other Beauty ranges across memories of a farm childhood, and further back, to the Mennonite exodus from Russia. We encounter immigrants, furnace repairmen and grocers, dead cats, a raven lifting into the clear, bright density of rain. Enns meditates on Bach, on solitude, and on exile both accidental and imposed, weaving darkness and light with great fidelity and authority.