by Penn Kemp
Contemporary Verse 2, Summer 2023, Vol. 46 No.1. P. 66-68, contemporaryverse2.ca
The Ridge
by Robert Bringhurst
Harbour Publishing, 2023
168 pp.; $22.95
This new poetry collection by Robert Bringhurst is well worth the wait: an occasion
to celebrate. Harbour Publishing has produced a beautiful book. The cover image is
of a powerfully evocative wood engraving, black on vibrant red, by Richard Wagen-
er. The first two pages present long lists of Bringhurst’s publications, impressive both
in breadth and depth: Poetry, Translation, Prose and Edited Works, in an order of
priority that is significant. Also significant is the poet’s dedication to beautiful letter-
press limited editions, like “Ten Poems with One Title” by Barbarian Press, included
in this present volume. The eight parts of this collection vary from one poem to ten.
The care in every detail, from typography to layout, displays a lifetime of attention:
a spaciousness on the page reflects the spaciousness of the poet’s perception. The
Ridge is chiseled, as if flint were shaped by a skilled carver into instruments of use to
the community, if we open our ears and listen.
The Ridge stands handsomely on its own, but to read it in the context of
Bringhurst’s entire oeuvre is a marvel. He wears his learning lightly and explains
what is needed. Still, best keep a dictionary or Dr. Google handy because his many
cultural references, from the Upanishads through Herakleitos to earth sciences, only
enrich your reading.
The book is the summation of a life embodied in the senses. Bringhurst is as gener-
ous in his output as in his acknowledgements. Elegies pay homage to a community
of writers: Stan Dragland, Victor Golla, Barry Lopez, and P.K. Page. A musical col-
laboration with Jan Zwicky set to Hayden includes the score (p. 59). The staves
of music provided are simple enough that an amateur can pick the notes out on a
keyboard. They add an immersive solemnity to a tradition, Christianity, that is then
set in the wider context of the earth itself with the interplay of words into music.
Bringhurst is constantly questioning our assumptions, with an acuity of mind
trained in the sciences and rooted in the sensorium. Take the poem “Stopping By”
(p. 85): the title alone conjures Robert Frost’s beloved poem, which begins “Whose
woods these are I think I know.” Robert Bringhurst’s first line in response is more
ambiguous, debating the very idea of ownership: “Whose woods they are I do not
know” (p. 85). He stands the original on its head: “How can trees be owned?”
When a poem bursts through a hallowed older poem like this, it carries the tradition
into the present, with a difference. Bringhurst challenges the notion of ownership:
“I only have to be here
long enough to take a breath,
And then it’s clear he did not own them,
nor do I.
What is it possible to own?” (p.87)
Bringhurst answers on the same page with the notion of “belonging, not owning.”
“it’s taken us our lives
to get this clear. You know
it’s what our lives are for.”
What triumph to achieve a clarity that costs nothing less than everything. The
Ridge is the culmination of long, close observation. Humanity is not primary in
these poems; earth is. If we knew we belonged to the earth, how could we destroy
so much? These words take new life as Bringhurst reads the collection’s centrepiece,
“The Ridge,” on line, in place, on the ridge he calls home. From the perspective
of age, he stands “in this / vicinity of space,” not looking down at his readers, but
around. We are transported to the specifics of Quadra Island’s ecological past, pres-
ent and future on the West Coast of Canada. The poem goes deep into old time—
before the ravens, before the trees, back, back, but also up, to the cosmos. Reaching
from particular details out to the abstract, these poems are portals that open and
open, and on. Such far-sightedness entices his readers to take the long view as well.
Further, he seems to say. This way, one more step. Look. Listen. The respect for the
natural world in Bringhurst’s poetry is contagious. As field guide, Bringhurst listens
to the land, and we can too, if we heed.
Riffing off Gary Snyder, Bringhurst asks:
“And is that what the land
understands that we don’t?
No self in self…
Suppose the land just understands
that it belongs. That’s all…
Could we belong to it?” (p. 88).
Bringhurst continues:
“The way we are, we don’t belong.
We’re passing by or passing through.”
These poems offer a very Buddhist sense of a world that is constantly appearing
and disappearing:
“whatever is real is always barely
coming into view or going away” (p. 87)
A reader’s small concerns drop off in the face of immensity that Bringhurst pres-
ents, with the courage it takes to cross so many borders and return with a traveler’s
tale to tell. To enter “The Ridge” is to step into a wider space, an old growth forest,
a ribbed cathedral, a larger presence. He is in place and he takes solace in the par-
ticulars of beauty around him. The land he dwells on becomes the concerns that he
dwells on in contemplation. He engages all the senses, mind very much included in
the insights with which he articulates his world. Bringhurst speaks for the land, and
surely that is what poets are required to do at this imperiled juncture for the world.
Participants in his inquiry, readers are encouraged to drop into stillness and attend.
Attention must be paid. If not now, when?
What’s the role of poetry? Who will listen to our prophets, our poets? Bringhurst
doesn’t stop at easy conclusions. But there is hope in language: “a poem is discov-
ered, not made, a poem is a well” (p. 82). “[A]s Wittgenstein put it: Astonishment
/ is thinking,” Bringhurst writes (p. 139), and these poems are thinking astonish-
ment. There is comfort in such articulation, whittled into stark and authoritative
simplicity.
May this book reach those who so desperately need this consolation and solace,
and its imperative. Courage, mes braves. It is in our hands to embrace the world and
to express its needs. Earth of course carries on very well by herself, left to her own
devices, but we, humanity, are reminded: do no harm.
Penn Kemp 