Susan McMaster
Susan McMaster Poems
We have no choice but to see our friends
through these last pavanes,
no special claim is needed now
...
Look out from the top
of the Gatineau Hills,
lean over the stone wall
at the Parkway's edge
...
—the pleasure of lusting
after you is to stroke, with my finger
the hollow beside your eye so lightly
...
Afraid she's fallen or had a stroke
when she doesn't answer my knock,
I have the nurse unlock her door,
...
And with this handful of dozing words
years later, adrift
on Lac Vert, lac reve
where first your rhythms reached me
...
You prepare a feast of bitter bread,
of acid wine and rancid flesh,
then sit me down. Now eat, you hiss,
...
Sitting here in the driver's seat
with still your library card, insurance forms, bills,
underneath the dash, cracked seat
...
When they leave, the lake
sharpens, clears
as if we'd turned the lens
on your father's binoculars,
...
The only seat with a hole in it,
you name me throne for my power:
built before the cabin's begun,
...
Thunder, and the wind at my back from a storm
that passes by the granite shelf dropped by ancient ice
on an unnamed hummock in the river's long drench
...
Where the river sluices under a sheen of ice
come way too soon - what I still can't bear
...
Her palms are hungry. Oh, other parts too,
but in the night, now he's gone, and even the cat
finds elsewhere to sleep, it's her palms that ache
...
And yet, returning in the night
is still enough. I climb down
from the plane into his soft
...
Ah, sex!
Roundy and humpbacked,
sweaty and slick,
finagling sweet talker
...
Susan McMaster Biography
Susan McMaster (born 1950) is a Canadian poet, literary editor, performance poet, and former president of the League of Canadian Poets (2011–12). McMaster came to Ottawa with her family in 1955 and attended First Avenue Public School, Elmdale, Connaught, Lisgar Collegiate (1966), Carleton University (B.A. in English, 1970; graduate studies in journalism), and Ottawa Teachers' College (elementary certificate, 1971). While she taught for a few years, McMaster has spent most of her paid working career as an editor, notably at the National Gallery of Canada from 1989 to 2008 as an editor of some 40 art catalogues and founder of the Gallery magazine Vernissage. Since 1996, McMaster has been the poet in Geode Music & Poetry,[clarification needed][weasel words] making four spoken word and music recordings with Jennifer Giles on keyboards, Alrick Huebener on bass, Gavin McLintock on sax, and friends, including Dave Broscoe, Jamie Gullikson, Mike Essoudry, Petr Cancura, Mark Molnar, John Higney, Linsey Wellman, Penn Kemp, Colin Morton, and Max Middle. She has performed and recorded with SugarBeat and Geode at 50-plus venues, including the Banff Centre, the National Library, the Kingston Fringe Jazz Festival, Rasputin's, the Blue Skies Music Festival, the Ottawa Folk Festival, the Elora Music Festival, Artscape, WordBeat, Morningside, Go, the National Arts Center Fourth Stage, and the Ottawa International Writers Festival, and has read and performed at festivals and venues in France and Italy. McMaster's recent poetry books are Paper Affair: Poems Selected and New (Black Moss 2010), Pith & Wry: Canadian Poetry (Scrivener Press 2010), and Crossing Arcs: Alzheimer's, My Mother, and Me (Black Moss 2010), which was a finalist for the 2010 Acorn-Plantos People's Poetry Prize, the 2010 Ottawa Book Awards, and the 2010 Archibald Lampman Award. She is the author of several wordmusic collections, performance poetry recordings and scripts, has edited poetry anthologies and series, and was the founding editor of the national feminist and art magazine Branching Out (1973–present). McMaster was an original member of the intermedia group First Draft (1981–present) that recorded, published, and performed some 40 times across Canada in the 1980s. McMaster's mid-life memoir, The Gargoyle's Ear: Writing in Ottawa (Black Moss 2007), recounts stories from the projects, contacts, and interests that comprise her life as a poet. Her millennial book, Waging Peace, collects the poetry, art, and texts from Convergence: Poems for Peace, which presented art-wrapped poems from across Canada to all MPs and Senators in 2001. Her poetry collection Until the Light Bends from Black Moss Press was shortlisted for the 2005 Archibald Lampman Award for poetry, and the 2005 Ottawa Book Award for best book of the year. Accompanying the book is her spoken word CD Until the Light Bends, with Geode Music & Poetry, from Pendas Productions.)
The Best Poem Of Susan McMaster
Red
Death is not red
in the cancer ward.
The vibrant red ivy
I bring you for fall
shrinks under fluorescence
into a bit of old tat
mistakenly dropped-
no rain or blue wind
carried in on the leaves
I prop in dry glass
knocked aside
by the friend
who bends over your bed
to catch
the last mutter
dry words
from dry lips
my handful of sun
rustles to the floor
rustles behind
as you pass
you pass
'pass through'
you pass
Susan McMaster Comments
Susan, I was in that class with you and the others for grades 5,6,7 and 8. I think you once had a class party at your home off Island Park.
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Delivering Poems Around The World
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4/26/2024 8:27:05 PM # 1.0.0.1119
I'm interested in attempting a class reunion. kenbeatty2929gmail.com