I have only what I remember, Merwin writes, resigned not to a dearth
but an omnium-gatherum of memories—whether amorphous and unloosed
from time or firmly grounded and undimmed as though he’s again
playing, in the re-entered past, the protagonist in the theatre of life.
From time to time mine ambush me as I walk down the street in full daylight. Some
delight, others devastate, breaking through the frozen crust to re-inflame
Ruth Roach Pierson taught women’s history, feminist and post-colonial studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto from 1980 to 2001, and European and women’s history at Memorial University of Newfoundland from 1970 to 1980. Since retiring she has published three poetry collections: Where No Window Was (BuschekBooks, 2002), Aide-Mémoire (BuschekBooks, 2007), which was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award in 2008, and Contrary (Tightrope Books, 2011). A fourth, Realignment, will appear from Palimpsest Press in 2015. She is the editor of the anthology of film poems I Found It at the Movies (Guernica Editions, 2014).
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