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    Footsteps of the Past
    Footsteps of the Past
    Footsteps of the Past
    Ebook114 pages34 minutes

    Footsteps of the Past

    By Philip Resnick

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    About this ebook

    Philip Resnick’s Footsteps of the Past constitutes a powerful set of reflections on the modern human condition. The book contains poems dealing with memory, recognition, and the slow passage of time, while others meditate on the deep wounds that chronic illness and disability instill. Some of the poems have a critical political edge, while others probe the cultural and philosophical underpinnings of our modern identities with cool detachment and unrelenting honesty. For inspiration, Resnick draws on Sophocles, Thucydides, Montesquieu, and, from our own day, Thomas Piketty and Charles Taylor. There is also a shout-out to “Je suis Charlie.” Always in these poems one senses a longing for a previous, perhaps mythical, time when the future opened the possibility of a world of ideals. For the reader, this book will resonate in quite unpredictable ways, much like the ferry of the mind whose voyage the author invokes. Bare-knuckled imagery, intellectual inquisitiveness, and a kaleidoscope of themes mark Footsteps of the Past as a strikingly original poetry collection.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRonsdale Press
    Release dateSep 15, 2015
    ISBN9781553804321
    Footsteps of the Past
    Author

    Philip Resnick

    Philip Resnick began writing poetry in Montreal, stopping for a time when he embarked on an academic career at the University of British Columbia. His marriage to Andromache (Mahie), who was Greek, resulted in numerous stays in Thessaly, in the city of Volos, and in a village on adjacent Mount Pelion. These stays rekindled his poetic inspiration and resulted in the publication of a number of collections in the late 1970s and 1980s. Philip has continued to write ever since and has published numerous poems in magazines and journals, as well as a 2015 collection Footsteps of the Past and 2018 collection Passageways. As a political scientist at the University of British Columbia for over forty years until his retirement in 2013, Philip has published widely on political topics. He makes his home in Vancouver, British Columbia.

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      Book preview

      Footsteps of the Past - Philip Resnick

      Author

      – I –

      AT HOME

      West Coast Mythistorema

      "Our country is a shut-in place, all mountains

      And the mountains roofed in by a low sky,

      day and night."

      — Seferis, Mythistorema X

      I

      Sometimes the mountains shut out the sky

      and throat-pipes constricted

      we gasp for air.

      Other times clouds lift

      and the sheer extent of heaven

      makes us land-sick,

      losing our balance where the river treads

      a cold grey line down through alpine passes.

      Already those who came before

      knew there was no going back,

      no westward haven to which,

      like the refuge cities of old

      one could run in one’s hour of need,

      no further parting of the sea

      leading to some promised land.

      Those who put down roots here

      knew how thinly they grew,

      top-soil washed away by salt and snow,

      ghost towns where gold seekers came to dwell,

      settlers from earth’s four corners,

      never quite sure why they had come,

      what restless energy drove them on,

      their skeletons consigned to graves

      with moss for sheets

      and stone markers, often in an alien tongue.

      II

      You can hear the shamans at night

      amidst the numerous inlets that dot the coast

      but all must be still,

      no motor boats, cruise-ships sailing north,

      garbled sounds of a centaur civilization,

      half chaotic, half addicted to the code of work.

      Plosives, guttural sounds, an occasional cry,

      blend with gulls along the shore,

      or the smooth flight of

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