Some Dance

"To be able to pry apart: / this is object, this is subject / even though (confusion begins) / he can be both. Difficult then / to stand at the mirror and reflect: / I am this. This is what I am." Some Dance is a meditation on stories, the intersection of stories, of things made up, of things imagined, and of things lived - perhaps. Tricks played by memory, scrambling events from life with fiction, are a constant. Ricardo Sternberg seeks a fixed point from which to understand the world, but finds no resolution save for another poem. Everything is in flux, unstable, and leads to unexpected places: a commune in the 1960s, a drunken doctor who deals in contraband, a palm reader, a classroom visited by Jesus, a dance in a darkened kitchen. A lively collection that turns towards the commonplace, classical, and strange, Some Dance masterfully balances serious thought, big ideas, and good humour through surprising, elegant, and colloquial expressions. Cover The Hugh MacLennan Poetry Series Copyright Contents I An Invocation of Sorts The Bench New Canaan As Patient of Doctor Ramon A Note Pairings The Soaps Such Wisdom California Fado The Island The Exquisite Art The Prodigal Stories Need Never End Though Most Do The Bench II Across the Mystic River Orpheus Echo At It Blues Meal Dip The Green Bird No Love Lost Beginning with Isaiah The Reckoning The Almighty In The Metro Back and Forth The Bees Ars Longa, Vita Brevis Fishing Morals Obit Skills The Good Brazilian The Word First One Thing and Then Another A Prince’s Soliloquy Biography Berkeley is in Brazil Kings Manual Some Dance Acknowledgments