A Whorl of Poetry

Index of Authors


The Stubborn Particulars of Grace

Poetry by Bronwen Wallace.

Bronwen Wallace has written at least the following books:
Poetry:

Fiction:


How can any of us know
what will speak for us or who
will be heard? We who are never
satisfied, eager for the evidence
no matter how it comes, slowing the car down
as we pass the accident, to see
what's pulled from the wreckage, crowding
the ones who were at the scene, the cop
or the ambulance driver, the survivors
stepping forward for their moment, blessed
by our terrible need to know everything.
Even those women we dread
sitting next to on buses or trains,
their bodies swelling with messy secrets,
the odour of complaint on their breath,
may be prophets. Whether we listen or not
won't stop them from telling
our story in their own.

-- From "Testimonies"
The Stubborn Particulars of Grace (1987), p. 48.

Links:

How it was wanting brought me to these poems. Wanting them to embrace that voice as I embrace my lover's body, to be shaped by everything they meet, the way I am shaped by my son, even now, as he grows taller than me into his own life. The obvious, unavoidable weight of it, how we fill each other briefly, but perfectly and then uncurl, from arms, wombs, lungs, as carelessly as smoke uncurls across the sky. Even the dead, whose dying goes on and on.

-- From "Where the sweetheart rides the rodeo again,"
Keep That Candle Burning Bright and other poems, p. 37.


A story of yours got this one going,
so I'm sending it back now, changed of course,
just as each person I love
is a relocation, where I take up
a different place in the world.

-- From "Bones"
The Stubborn Particulars of Grace, p. 80.