Holding the Dark...

"It's rare for a first book to sing with such complexity and resonance. Holding the Dark is a sustained celebration of the way love dissolves borders, between joy and pain, between our lives, our dreams, and everything that goes on around us." -- George Amabile

In Melanie Cameron's evocative opening poem, a young woman, temporarily deprived of her eyesight, pushes herself deep into inner space, letting the darkness unfold around her until "the boundaries of skin" dissolve and personal identity is fractured "like a galaxy into constellations." The poems that follow explore what can happen when you dare to "keep your closed eyes open in the dark." They touch on violence, mortality, mourning. But they also open the space of darkness to reveal its potential for intimacy, its rich eroticism, and its promise of liberation in a world without visual boundaries. Combining the intensity of the lyric with the scope of the long poem, Holding the Dark invites us to rethink our conventional concepts of darkness and enter the sensuous night.

Excerpts

It happened like this...
I love you furiously...
Beyond wishing, she wishes...

Reviews

Globe and Mail
Prairie Fire
Rhubarb
The Literary Network
Uptown Magazine

Publication Information

Author: Melanie Cameron
Publisher: The Muses' Company
Date of publication: September 1999
Pages: 112
Cost: $12.95 CAN
ISBN: 1896239471

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