Whetstone by Lorna Crozier

There is a brand of quiet poetry that appeals to and influences me in my own work. To that end, I’ve returned to Lorna Crozier’s work, specifically her collection Whetstone. As with any similar collection, some of the poems resonated and others did not. It’s more about occupying the same psychic space and allowing yourself to be guided along.

The titular poem stands out as one of the highlights for me, particularly because of its vivid first lines: “The stone that sharpens stars, / their slow slice across the sky” (13). Jan Zwicky’s essay about resonance in poetry has proven enduring in the way I think about poems. Resonance often seems to use juxtaposition as a medium for finding connection, and following this idea of a stone sharpening stars in the sky, Crozier says, “it must have mingled with the gravel / on the road I run. Now its light / has reached my eyes” (13). I can see a parallel between the smattering of stars across a night sky and the stream of stones that form the gravel, every once in a while one standing out. There’s also an odd inversion here, though, because typically we’d think of the light from stars’ light taking years to reach our eyes, but the pronoun here refers to the whetstone. It intimates the slow labour of sharpening but at the same time, the stone is placing a demand on the speaker: “What does it want from me? / To be moved into another / galaxy of knives?” (13). Alternatively, the stone could be making a call “to be looked upon and left / where it has found me?” (13). The stone is given agency, while the speaker is being called towards agency. Or, perhaps there’s no difference between them: “Maybe it’s just a stone // among other stones, desireless / and unafflicted” (13). As with other poems in this mode, a small phenomenon is then extended into something much larger, more cosmic. The narrator reflects: “Does it know I am // dulled by God? / His negligence, / his under-use” (13). I think the poem, at its core, is a matter of agency and responsiveness, and ultimately the choice to either act or not act.

Crozier’s mode here feels so similar to Jan Zwicky; I notice her guidance is documented in the acknowledgements of Whetstone. This influence also emerges in the meditations on nature. The book is largely wintery, and “Prayers of Snow” sets that tone, which reads, in part, as follows:

Snow is a lesson in forgetting, a lesson in gravity,
a long loose sentence spiralling to the end of thought.
It prays to the young god robed in white, his ascent
a blizzard returning to the sky. (11)

As I suggested, there’s a kind of cosmic quality imbued to the natural phenomenon. The laws of the universe (gravity) are embodied by a particular, observable phenomenon (snow). Having tangible images like this really gives readers something to latch onto. Imagining snow as a kind of language is also delightful; the snow streams down as a “long loose sentence” and the odd inversion of a blizzard returning to the sky is a nice touch. The poem then reads as a kind of prayer and ultimately the snow “closes the gap / between drought and plenty, belief and blasphemy, / the ear and silence” (11). The idea of snow being something that joins disparate phenomena together feels true. Consider the way that an endless stretch of white snow erases distinct features and makes everything into one canvas. Snow becomes “a migration of birds / without eyes, without feet, who settle white in branches / on breasts and wings. When you stride through snow / in dreams of waking, you are a star-walker. / It prays to the soft fall of your books” (11). I like the way the snow prays to the world around it and the distinction between snow and other things fades: snow and birds are the same. The idea of being a “star-walker” every time you walk through snow also gives the poem its cosmic quality and makes sense with the idea of snow being star-like in its shape.

There are other poems that have a similar motif: a totalizing phenomenon that reveals connection. In the poem “Solitude,” for example, Crozier describes “Sometimes the dark’s so dark / nothing can move through it” (38). She specifies that the wind and the geese can’t move through it, despite how an hour ago they “charcoaled their journey from star to star” (38). I love noun-verbs, and “charcoaled” here feels evocative. Again, there’s a motif of stars that stand as nodes in a network of connection. The poem then continues to describe in second person that “you love the lake at night / because water keeps its distance / yet carries sound, crackled and clear, from the farthest shore” (38). Again, there’s these spaces that are vast and empty but serve as bridges of connection to the farthest shores. Crozier again gets more precise: “the hard notes of a party / drift through the screen from cabins / on the southern spit” (38). If you’ve ever sat by water in the darkness, you know these two emptinesses that connect: “You said / nothing moves through this dark. / But music does, and voices, / and you go on” (38).

One more poem I’d like to comment on is “The Physics of the Rose.” The poem opens with an epigraph about the electron and us living in different worlds. In describing the rose, Crozier says “each petal [is] an eyelid, blood-fused, over what / invisible eyes!” (24). The idea of an eyelid sealed shut by blood is both beautiful and horrific. Continuing to describe the rose, “fold after fold, its silence so enclosed / it seems a kind of speaking, light’s muted // hallelujah brought inside” (24). Crozier reads into silences and finds their voice. She looks into the quiet phenomena and imbues them with a voice, just as these roses speak in the silence of their folds. Later in the short poem, she describes it as “the antithesis of absence, / of stillness, its red fist unfurling / this, this and this, a daring to be open / so immoderate you want to say outrageous, / you want to say ridiculous, but can’t” (24). The idea of the rose being the antithesis of absence is a compelling phrase and emulates Crozier’s philosophy. Despite the silence, the rose speaks. Despite this, there’s a dark tone that gets couched in pretty imagery. Crozier describes the rose as “shocking as a heart cut out and set in glass” (24). The gruesome undertone draws attention to that which is otherwise quiet. The final lines of the poem then invert our expectations: suddenly we are the one being watched. She writes, “Clothed or not, you stand naked in its eyes. / Small and unadorned, / without a lover” (24). We are no longer the observer; the brilliant presence of the rose is observing us…I suppose when you stare into the rose long enough the rose stares back?

Throughout the collection, there were a number of poems I liked, a few that I loved, and a few I failed to linger on. It’s a good collection and, as with all poetry, the more time I spent thinking through it the more I was able to see what Crozier’s mission might be. It’s worth reading and I’ll stand by my philosophy that poems are best read as part of a full collection. The more time you spend with a voice, the more you’re able to hear its nuances.

Happy reading!