Floating Up To Zero
Files
Description
In Floating Up to Zero, Ken Norris introduces us to “a traveller from an antique land,” though in this case that traveller’s story is not Shelley’s meditation on the vanity of ancient kings, but rather the poet’s meditation on the here and now, on the present moment, precariously balanced between a certain frozen past and an uncertain fluid future. Spanning a year in Norris’s life, the centre of this poetic journey finds the poet trapped in his house. It is mid-winter, the thermometer reads 35 degrees below zero, and he’s trying to dig his way out to the world, where the blizzards and the city snowplows seem to conspire to undo all the pathways shoveled, the driveways cleared. His physical isolation turns him inward: “Surprised when anybody sees me. I’ve lived in the obscurity of exile. And now am deemed too old for practically everything. I fade into the wallpaper, with only my senses alive. Little by little you become an object to the world, then a useless object the day you vanish from sight completely.”
ISBN
9780889226593
Publication Date
2011
Publisher
Talonbooks
City
Vancouver, BC
Keywords
Poet, Home bound, Winter
Disciplines
English Language and Literature
Recommended Citation
Norris, Ken, "Floating Up To Zero" (2011). Faculty and Staff Monograph Publications. 19.
https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/fac_monographs/19