Little Wildheart

Front Cover
University of Alberta, Feb 8, 2017 - Poetry - 80 pages
By turns quirky, startling, earthy, and hope-filled, Micheline Maylor’s poems slip effortlessly through topics ranging from what we give up as we age to regrets for love that has passed, the interplay between the animal world and human thought, and the myths we append to ourselves and others. An expansive, conversational voice underscores the poet’s technical mastery as her subjects turn from love to hope to fearlessness. Maylor asks readers to perceive how we inhabit our selves, how words construct us. Little Wildheart is rich with challenge and surprise. I check the box on the government forms: Caucasian. No box for colonized, for the 1/16th bred. Just the double helix of my DNA, my ability to sun-brown, and my own green-eyed children of the voyageur, river visions still caught in their irises. We’re born out of a long ago season. Everyone is sure of place and race. Blood and semen mixed in dirt and cervix, convex and enchanted by muskrat’s eerie smile, dark truth furred and matted, stroked by a river paddle. Let that long tooth bite now in the land of the race riots, negro, and redskin, the underground railroad, and the Indian village. Let the name Pontiac take new form and hit the road, the righteous mile where judgement and boundary blurs, especially on matters of composition blood, bone, and relations. —from “Detroit Zoo bathroom 1977”
 

Contents

We are entirely flammable
1
Autobiography
2
Convergence
3
The lovers
4
Dissilience
5
Ten
6
In Saskatchewan surrealism invades the silence
8
Rewind
9
How to be in a garden
38
Fleece
40
Thorn apples
41
Dust
42
Another day of feminist perspective
43
Relativity
44
Reasons for learning cursive
45
I always wanted a tattoo
46

Rust
11
Conscientious objectors
12
Polarity
13
Before the dark
14
Morning on the old reserve
15
Detroit Zoo bathroom 1977
16
Legendagenda
17
Prayer of the agnostic
18
Constitution
19
Oh by the way
20
Unrequited
21
Red sky at morning
22
The narrative
23
Three dogs and an old man
24
Almanac of the Douglas fir
25
Cormorants
26
Le deluge
27
For there are still such mysteries and such advice
28
Consecrated grounds
30
Rapid eye movement
31
Ooh nom
32
About suffering
34
If you
35
No snow falls
36
Pupil
37
Of appreciation
48
45 am
49
Firewall
50
Inclement
51
Dive
52
Evacuation
53
Mercurial
54
Citizenship of the broken heart
55
Fear of water
56
The chosen
57
Let free
58
Ordinary days
59
Drop of doom
60
There is no place that does not see you
62
Between the trees
63
Talisman pool
64
Ive forgotten more than I knew
65
Free
66
Benediction
67
I bet you already knew
68
Acknowledgements
71
Closing epigraph
73
About the Author
75
Other Titles from The University of Alberta Press
78
Copyright

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About the author (2017)

Poet laureate and Mount Royal University professor Micheline Maylor has written for the Literary Review of Canada and Quill & Quire. A co-founder of FreeFall Literary Society, she lives in Calgary. Find her online at www.michelinemaylor.com.

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