Answer to Blue
April 27th, 2022
D.H. Lawrence posed the question “Oh what in you can answer to this blueness?” and North Vancouver poet Russell Thornton replies with his recent collection of poems, Answer to Blue (Harbour $18.95). Thornton meanders through the past with family histories, memories of lost lovers, mythologies and biblical references, even questioning perception itself: “You, me, you, me, you, me, you me. / Whatever either of us sees is a lie.” But his elegies to past family members are poignant, like those to his “welfare witch mom” who let her children buy cheap junk food dinners while their friends had roast beef meals, yet Thornton remembers he and his brothers still “dined together like princes on Smitty’s burgers.” 9781550179675
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