The poems in Collecting Silence arc through youth, love and loss, to maturation, aging, peace. Wide travels throughout Asia, Europe and North America bring Narwani face to face with the oppressions of poverty, caste and religion, as well as the seductions of magical new beauty. The poems take the reader down the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok, to Chopin's garden; a village of untouchables in India, to remnants of the Berlin Wall; from the Piet{grave}a and the Mona Lisa to Magritte's The False Mirror. Always they are grounded in what Narwani can touch, see, love and remember. Growing up in Canada in a Baltic-German family that was forced to emigrate from their homeland of Latvia at the onset of WWII, Narwani strives to retain language, preserve links to the family's past, a vanished way of life, so it may deepen her own. Always she listens for what connects, what bridges boundaries and separations, for the inner home that sustains and renews her. It is in our silences, Narwani says, that memories, our deepest experiences, talk to us in a language we all know without speaking. In this time of non-stop connectivity and chatter, Collecting Silence offers a timely alternative.
Authors
- Control Number Identifier
- CaOOCEL
- Description conventions
- rda
- Dewey Decimal Classification Number
- C811/.6
- Dewey Decimal Edition Number
- 23
- Distributor
- Canadian Electronic Library (Firm),
- General Note
- Poems Issued as part of the desLibris books collection
- ISBN
- 9781553804895 9781553804871
- LCCN
- PR9199.3.N257
- LCCN Item number
- C657 2017eb
- Modifying agency
- CaBNVSL
- Original cataloging agency
- CaBNVSL
- Physical Description | Extent
- 1 electronic text (92 pages)
- Published in
- Ottawa, Ontario
- Publisher or Distributor Number
- CaOOCEL
- Rights
- Access restricted to authorized users and institutions
- System Control Number
- (CaBNVSL)thg00974167 (OCoLC)963394082 (CaOOCEL)477546
- System Details Note
- Mode of access: World Wide Web
- Transcribing agency
- CaBNVSL
Table of Contents
- Cover 1
- Title Page 4
- Copyright Page 5
- Acknowledgements 7
- Contents 10
- - I - 14
- Prayer Flags 16
- Never Too Late 17
- Jumping into Water 18
- The Fish 19
- A Reminiscent Shape 20
- Sandy Path 21
- Netsuke 23
- The Morning Is Too Straight 24
- This Foreign Language 25
- Buoy 26
- Good Things 28
- Day of Mushrooms 29
- Dun 30
- Collecting Silence 31
- Ocean Wilderness 32
- - II - 34
- Walls 36
- Watchdog 39
- The False Mirror 40
- Mona Lisa 42
- Newcomers 43
- Brink Year 45
- Separation 46
- Intertidal 47
- Charcoal Portrait 48
- The Fourth Monk 49
- Edmonton’s Royal Jubilee Auditorium 51
- My Day’s Full Beauty 52
- Curriculum Vitae 53
- Three Wishes 54
- Tide 55
- Visit to South Haven Cemetery 56
- Hazard Note 58
- Conversation 59
- Trestle Bridge Nightmare 61
- Crater Lake 62
- - III - 64
- Ghost Lilies 66
- Hollows 68
- Patch of Land, Liepāja, Latvia 69
- Clear-cut 70
- Violence Seems Unreal for a While 71
- When Sky Leaps 73
- Peaks 74
- In the Beginning 76
- Blue and White Pottery 77
- After the Opera on Humboldt Street 78
- - IV - 80
- Somewhere a Ferry 82
- Frolic 84
- Anniversary 85
- Eclipse 87
- David Bowie on the Malahat 88
- Forward to Mars 89
- Harijan 91
- Mountains of Meteora 93
- Lament 94
- Extinction 95
- Rim Light 98
- Grand Staff of Music 99
- Testing Balance 100
- Blinding White 101
- An Offering 102
- White Postcards 103
- Femme Assise 104
- Pietà 105
- About the Author 106
