{"id":16303,"date":"2023-05-31T07:12:57","date_gmt":"2023-05-31T02:12:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/?p=16303"},"modified":"2023-06-01T18:45:12","modified_gmt":"2023-06-01T13:45:12","slug":"almost-beauty-sue-sinclair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/editorials\/almost-beauty-sue-sinclair\/","title":{"rendered":"Tender Distances: Sue Sinclair\u2019s Almost Beauty<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Almost Beauty<\/em> is a collection of over one hundred poems, selected from Sue Sinclair\u2019s previous five books along with a significant body of new work, spanning the breadth of her twenty-year career. What is immediately noticeable is her consistent return to the subject of beauty\u2014beauty as truth, as falsehood, as manufactured and immortal. Sinclair\u2019s rural Canadian landscapes are anything but immune to such paradoxes, visited as sites of natural wonder but also as occasions for interior reflection and historical grieving. Beauty is both subject to and an object of human imagination: an unremitting thesis whose footnotes cross the sands of millennia, citing prophets, saints, spiders and goldfish, but whose final point is left unspoken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Sue Sinclair. Almost Beauty<\/em>. Fredericton, NB: Goose Lane Editions. 2022.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cThe Prado,\u201d the book\u2019s opening poem, Sinclair offers an ars poetica dramatized through a speaker who contemplates the framed faces meeting her along the halls of the museum; how it feels to be met by such willful eyes, imagining what it is to be willing. The speaker wonders if there\u2019s a trace in her own face that reflects what she searches for in art; what she finds herself so inexplicably drawn to. When the reader is suddenly addressed we find that we ourselves have entered a museum\u2014standing in the foyer where the speaker comes out to meet us, welcoming us in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

If there is in me something worth being seen, let it look out at you
from my face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let me try.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let me try again. (\u201cThe Prado\u201d)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

There is so much love in these poems\u2014so much patience, generosity and attention. And yet, despite Sinclair\u2019s remarkable talent for observation and specificity\u2014or perhaps as a result of it\u2014it\u2019s the inevitable distance between us and the world we inhabit, the limits to our knowledge, that\u2019s really at the crux of much of her work. \u201cNo one could dream \/ anything stranger than belonging, \/ a horizon like this doesn\u2019t \/ allow for it\u201d (Grazing). As she suggests in the poem \u201cRoses,\u201d in which the speaker arranges some roses in a jar as a simple aesthetic gesture, this ontological distance, which is often regarded in works of literature as the subject of existential bafflement, is also the very space where literature and other practices of the imagination flourish. Once the roses are placed, they immediately become the subject of poetic contemplation: \u201chow they gather \/ the room about them yet think nothing of it, how each \/ thorn persists, how they have made a purpose \/ of holding still (\u201cRoses\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The word \u201chow,\u201d repeated several times throughout this poem and others, possesses within it two diametrically opposing functions: to explain and to wonder. Sinclair\u2019s oeuvre is resplendent with such examples of paradox\u2014of beauty within the grotesque, of the inanimate taking flight. Both portrayal and pursuit, Almost Beaut<\/em>y is a lasting tribute to a fleeting world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Bios<\/h2>\n\n\n

Clayton Longstaff<\/a><\/h3>\r\n

Clayton Longstaff<\/strong> is a writer whose work has appeared in publications including The Dalhousie<\/em> Review<\/em>, Geist<\/em>, Canadian Literature<\/em>, Prism International<\/em>, Literary Review of Canada<\/em> and elsewhere. He lives on the traditional territory of the Lekwungen & W\u0331S\u00c1NE\u0106 nations. [updated January 2023]<\/p>\r\n <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Almost Beauty is a collection of over one hundred poems, selected from Sue Sinclair\u2019s previous five books along with a significant body of new work, spanning the breadth of her twenty-year career. What is immediately noticeable is her consistent return to the subject of beauty\u2014beauty as truth, as falsehood, as manufactured and immortal. Sinclair\u2019s rural […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"3281","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"16691,16210,16394,17678","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3281],"tags":[],"genre":[21],"publisher":[183],"issue":[],"poet-in-residence":[],"series":[3134],"topic":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16303"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16303"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16859,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16303\/revisions\/16859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16303"},{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=16303"},{"taxonomy":"publisher","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publisher?post=16303"},{"taxonomy":"issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue?post=16303"},{"taxonomy":"poet-in-residence","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/poet-in-residence?post=16303"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=16303"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=16303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}