THINGS THAT KEEP AND DO NOT CHANGE: The Poems of Susan Musgrave

There is nothing like a Sunday dinner with my brilliant writer/editor/filmmaker friends.  The conversation runs the gamut, ranging from the career of surfer Kelly Slater, to Dark Shadows, to literature.  And last night we discussed Susan Musgrave, who is my favorite Canadian poet (after Leonard Cohen). 

She's had an interesting life:

Susan Musgrave is married to Stephen Reid, a writer, convicted bank robber and former member of the infamous band of thieves known as the Stopwatch Gang. Their relationship was chronicled in 1999 in the CBC series Life and Times.


I highly recommend her work.  Here's an excerpt of one of her poems:


Exchange of Fire 

By Susan Musgrave

From:   Things that Keep and Do Not Change. McClelland&Stewart, 1999

"When your left arm touched my right
as we both reached for the dessert
menu in the all-night diner, a spark
began smouldering in my sleeve, broke
a hole the size of a heart in the patched
elbow of your jacket.

Dirty white smoke enveloped our bodies
as the conversation turned
to the underground fire we'd all seen
on the news, a fire that had raged up
to consume everything in its path..."

read the rest of the poem here