Book description
Smoke and Lilacs is full of play and shadow, whispered intimations
of mortality and glances of humour, elegiac lyric playing against
steely classicism, an easy modern vernacular eliding with timeless
grace. Sibum's meditative narratives move between worlds, modern and
ancient, the state of our civic order and the realm of love. Human
love and lust exist within the forces of empire - Rome or America. Men
and women continue to ask of life 'from what god does it come, / To
what serendipity does it go / if chance is all and all there's been?',
and the gods 'laugh at those who laugh at chance'. Across centuries,
voices create a complex music from their moments on earth, the echoes
of their 'gossip in the rain's cold light'.
'A world is glimpsed from the corner of his eye, a multiplicity of
voices is briefly overheard. From these Sibum has made a rough, durable
fabric; he is a Browning for our times while at the same time having
developed a voice that is completely his own.' - Marius Kociejowski
Born in Oberammergau in 1947, Norm Sibum grew up in Germany, Alaska,
Utah and Washington and now lives in Montreal. He founded the Vancouver
Review in 1989 and has published several collections in Canada. In 1993
Carcanet published In Laban's Field, a selected oems and his British
debut.
