Cameron Anstee, Sky Every Day. Kentville, Nova Scotia: Gaspereau Press, 2024, 400 copies.
Sometimes I don’t want to write a review but simply an appreciation. I want to say: this is so lovely, it made my day better, you should have a copy, too. Not terribly insightful but that’s how I feel about Cameron Anstee’s Sky Every Day.
These poems are so spare they make haiku seem verbose. Their words are like spots of sun on a wooden table, like the first few raindrops on a window. We learn nothing about the poet, but so much about his thought and experience. Here is all of “Dawn”:
even
so
even
now
thinking
of
even
ing
Not evening itself, but thinking of it. Of the thing itself and of the word, too. After I decided to quote this poem, I immediately regretted not choosing “Sparrow” in which a bird flies away “forever” but only to the next street.
If I were going to analyze these poems rather than merely appreciate them, I would look closely at the way Anstee slices his words (“per/sists,” “end/less/ness”), sometimes to make up an entire poem such as “Late March”:
an
en
tire
win
dow
of
win
ter
or how he inverts word order (“L’accent”) or how, by repetition of a word (“blue,” “bluer”) he somehow manages to both intensify and lighten it. I might also think about what Anstee edits out of his view–cars, recycling bins, piles of dirty snow, electrical wires, cellphones–although I would also have to say what a relief it is to leave them all behind for a while.
But instead I’ll simply let these poems raise me into the sky, lifting my heart into the “blue” and “bluer still”.
Word Music 