"Nostalgia for Moving Parts" by Diane Tucker

Long-time friend of the blog, Diane Tucker, has just released her fourth poetry collection, "Nostalgia for Moving Parts", from Turnstone Press (you can read my interview with Diane, about her third collection Bonsai Love, here).

The book officially "launched" online last week, and will be celebrated in person this Thursday at the July "Strangers Summer Series" event in Vancouver's Douglas Park. To whet your appetite for both the book and the event, here's a sample poem from the book:

 

VanDusen Garden in October

Imagine being planted long enough
that your roots grow up through the earth,
breaking the mossy surface the way
a fish’s spine rises from the bronze lake.

Imagine walking in a chilled silence
until you hear three black squirrels
chewing and hear their tiny hearts beat
when the raven screams. Imagine

white-gowned women in a fern dell.
Imagine they’ve swallowed all of the
October light and shine with it like
walking birches. Imagine small bridges

over a dry stream. Imagine every leaf
assembling, red-gold current of autumn
wind running under ice-hearted stones.
Imagine pausing there, letting the chill

slip itself down your back, into your
lungs. Imagine your coat, your scarf,
your boots loosen, open, and let slip in
November’s sleek and blandishing hands. 

"November’s sleek and blandishing hands"! I think about that line often. I was honoured to be able to read the book in advance and provide a blurb, which summarises my feelings on both the book and, in some ways, this poem:
 

When Diane Tucker hangs up a payphone in Nostalgia for Moving Parts' title poem, she observes that "there is (oh unexpected pleasure) a real click." When she lays down to sleep: "the prayers / that fight up through me make a sort of hum." Click and hum. Nostalgia and prayer. What's been and what will always be. Nostalgia for Moving Parts reminds us how to hear and see the ephemeral in the eternal and the eternal in the ephemeral: the moving parts of all our lives.

Do pick up a copy of the book, either online from the Turnstone Press website, or from your local bookstore, or in person on Thursday, July 15th from Diane herself!

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Diane Tucker is a poet, editor, fiction writer, and playwright from Vancouver, BC. Her work has been widely anthologized and published in more than seventy journals in Canada and abroad. Her first poetry collection, God on His Haunches (Nightwood Editions, 1996), was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Nostalgia for Moving Parts is her fourth book of poems.