Ben & Jock Paperback - 2001

In his fourth collection of poems, David Manicom affirms his place as one of the most compelling poets writing in Canada today. "The Burning Eaves, a mixture of shorter lyrics and longer sequences, is a meditation on the nature of language and the power of love. In Manicom's world, things are never as they appear to be; yet he is a trustworthy guide who steers us through a poetic geography, from chaos to the edge of our longing for order. As a poet, he is forever inhabiting more than one myth, as he uses the mathematics of interplanetary physics and astronomy to explore the universe of intimate objects and the particularities of our daily lives. Our journey through these poems is one of twists and turns, through sudden, surprising shifts that are mesmerizing in the way they reveal how we experience the world in language and thought, how we process irony in coping with our inexorable sadness and our search for grace. In the "Tal" section, a marvelous sequence of poems for his lover, nothing is constant. The line between shadow and light, transformation and permanence, is never clear-cut. We lean on history, on systems of belief, which give us a feeling of security; yet, what lies beyond? Manicom's is a universe of uncertainties, the decay of orbits contrasted with the beauty of fleeting things. In the exquisite love-poem "The Ceiling of a Room," we meet the poet as archeologist: "Or my lifelong excavation, my dig toward a root/That proved but layer on layer of sky. Had I known." We, as readers, "believe with the belief of desire." Silence and language are reflections, evoking half-forgotten experiences and things recorded in past moments.