Stones Will Shout

Book excerpt: In Stones Will Shout, Helen E. Herr shares poetic anecdotes that demonstrate life's ironies and loveliness in equal measure. "Our children have left home for their careers/I just begin mine," she writes, reminiscing about obtaining a theology degree in her 40s; and, after a beloved foster son's death, she reveals that in the heart of deepest pain "all smile for family photos". Herr also celebrates Saskatchewan's beauty and the gifts nature delivers, ie: crocuses "dress frosty hills/in mauve," and seagulls at Greig Lake "map routes in the sand". This is a writer who not only understands that the "Black-eyed oak refuses/to face the ocean" because it is "ashamed to be a bench/on a beach," but also empathizes with that misplaced tree. The human body becomes wind, tree, moon, bird, water. In their disparate subject matter—and with Herr's ability to press the bruises—the poems in this candid and well-honed collection remind us that where there have been shadows, the light one day returns. How does one survive a life? By naturalizing sorrow, creativity, community, and the self as part of the order of all things animate and inanimate. - Taylor Leedahl, Toronto, ON