He Leaves His Face in the Funeral Car

HE LEAVES HIS FACE IN THE FUNERAL CAR is elegiac, lyrical, ironic; a series of reflections, recollections; a collection about relationships-to family, clocks, water, trees, ungulates, endings-recognizing that not all relationships are straightforward: a mother's secret false teeth, a teakettle riddled with bullet holes, pears and small knives. To leave a face in the funeral car is to fall out of time, to fall into history, to ponder the meanings of dust, the quiet records of suicide. This is poetry that covers a broad range, wide and changing, the strangeness of everyday life buoyed by the solace of language, the pleasure of song. Each word in its right place, each poem reflecting beyond surface meaning.

Arleen Pare Arleen Paré's first book, PAPER TRAIL, was awarded the Victoria Butler Book Prize and was shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Prize in Poetry. She has two other books, LEAVING NOW and LAKE OF TWO MOUNTAINS, the 2014 winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry. Her writing has appeared in a number of literary journals and anthologies in Canada. She lives in Victoria and holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Victoria.