Recently awarded the Alden Nowlan Award for excellence in English-language literature by the New Brunswick Legislative Assembly, Fred Cogswell is widely known as once editor of The Fiddlehead and publisher of Fiddlehead Poetry Books, as a leading Canadian Poet and critic, and as a translator, including The Complete Poems of Emile Nelligan. His own poetry has been much published and translated abroad.

   In the essay: The Nature and Function of Poetry that inspired this book, Fred says:
      "Of all games that life has devised, the most meaningful and the most bound up with pain and leisure is creation. Of all the forms of human creation, the most complex and the one which absorbs all the attributes of humanity is poetry. It is like the earth, though. To see it shine at its most beautiful, we must go to the moon."
   So the task of this little book is to take you to the moon so that when you look again at Fred´s poetry you will see the most beautiful shine.    Kathleen Forsythe is Fred´s only surviving child. A writer herself, she lives with Fred and thousands of books in Burnaby, B.C. where she also works in education.

In Cogswell's cosmology 'the senses help us transform reality, they build the bridges... to end our loneliness.' Yet Cogswell advocates no self-delusion or Ribaudian disordering of the senses. His unassuming poems strive for an equilibrium between human sensations and the things neglected by the poets from the urban centres. The senses in Cogswell's poems carry reflections to and from the venerated, they are alert and self-taxing.

The Purest Pleasure The purest pleasure known to me is love, through pain be in the giving. So great a treasure, pearl formed, on a cosmic plane must seed all-living.

The Decision

In the Fall sunshine the whole world was glowing
And before her now the digger was going,
But she must answer at the end of the row.
Which word should she say to him, "yes" or "no"?

She hadn't even known the way he'd asked her
If 'twas herself or "it" that he was after.
But no one else had asked. It was her first chance,
And she'd been one who'd often sat out a dance.

Others around her were picking spuds like crazy.
She snapped off the head of an ox-eyed daisy
And pulled off its petals, counting one by one
Till they were gone and deciding was done.

A small thing it was that could come anyhow,
But an answer would end suspense. Why not now?
"No" for an odd number; if even, say "yes"
An outside verdict, not an inside guess.

At the row's end, coolly her answer was given.
The result for both was not hell nor heaven.
It made her wonder as the years dragged along
Why deliberately she'd counted wrong.

Full Circle

A child holds one end of a string.
The other end is tied to a pull-toy.
The pull-toy´s wheels rest on the grass.
The grass is rooted to the earth.
The earth touches the waters of the sea.
The sunlight strikes the waters and draws them up.
The waters vaporized become a cloud.
The cloud bursts and spills its rain.
The rain falls on the child holding a string.

Copyright © by Borealis Press Ltd. and Fred Cogswell, 1997 - 2001.

Fall Walk
I still remember what the farm looked like In the Fall when we were young. We would walk To the farthest pasture, a one-mile hike, And on the way we'd hardly ever talk.
Late November, and each night Winter's vice Grew tighter on what leaves were left to brown. The water in the lane-ruts turned to ice That broke and tinkled when our boots came down.
The only warm-colored thing was one spruce Near the orchard. The apple boughs were bare, And as we breathed it seemed the smell of juice Still lingered in the taste of morning air.
Careless we ate the air and drank the light For the last time before the world turned white.

Realty we refract our world through an invisible bowl-- gold-fish do the same ...

Query for a Machine Age The frail organic world from seed to bloom Puts a rich variety on display, While steel perfection in machines has room For but one change alone - and that´s decay. Why should we standardize our messy ways To calm routines and try to treat our hearts (As specialists would have us do these days) Like subservient, replaceable parts? Unless (as William Blake sometimes expressed Before such logic human minds controlled) The victims of Urizen do not rest Till they at last become what they behold.

The Phoenix-Fire
The phoenix-fire burns with the mind´s cold rage Consuming flesh and blood to residue, Black words that lie, cold ash upon the page;
But ash has life enough to re-engage New flesh and blood in what their time should do. The phoenix-fire burns with the mind´s cold rage
As, captured by contagion, men assuage Old madnesses with new forms poured into Black words that lie, cold ash upon the page.
It matters not at all if we be sage Or neutral nothing to the learned few, The phoenix-fire burns with the mind´s cold rage.
Fanned by a spirit-wind, age after age Finds itself mortal and is charred down to Black words that lie, cold ash upon the page.
So in their turns the generations stage Their own death-flames that kindle flames anew: The pheonix-fire burns with the mind´s cold rage Black words that lie, cold ash upon the page.

One Day I Returned

One day I returned to the place
Where we last saw each other.
It had changed so much that only
The street-sign told me where I was,
And where the house she lived in once stood
A brand-new supermarket stands.

As for the matter that made up me,
Not one particle of it remained.
The eyes that saw, the ears that heard,
The flesh that touched were otherwhere,
And the cells that replace them
Had come from quite different pasts.

Despite all this, nothing that once was
Had altered. I had but to close my eyes
To see her, as sharp and clear
As when alive - as for touch and voice,
Tied to an immaterial chain
Of memory she had not let go.

Copyright © by Borealis Press Ltd. and Fred Cogswell, 1989 - 2001.