In celebration of the young child, Rose, music of a winter evening. rob mclennan lives in Ottawa, Canadian literary icon, poet and writer of nearly 30 books, award winning and much published author. He is also the Poetry Editor and publisher at above/ground press, Chaudiere Books, The Garneau Review, The Peter F. Yachtclub, ottawater.com, seventeen seconds: a journey of poetry and poetics, Touch the Donkey and runs an online poetry blog(robmclennan.blogspot.com).

In rob mclennan’s instantly recognizable New Age style, a stark, yet warm look in a long poem at parenting the new addition to the family, the young girl child Rose. Despite the ruminations on winter, the unsettled universe in journey, the busy of life and work, the child is a celebration. In the jazzspeak, discontinued, continued and fractured verse, as if a tango with violence of life N.A., the contrast in Imagist influence of the beauty in winter imagery. The poetry speaks “This is an echo. Winter.” And “At the time, suspected: she / the daughter of storms.” A brush with romance in the recreated Age of renaissance.

Through the long sleepless night, as if a journey in existentialism, the poetry travels through exhaustion, a lack of sleep, laundry cycles, writing, the child being fed by his wife, the child spitting up, to emerge and flower in daylight at the end of darkness with a celebration, “Rose unfolds, a petal opens.”

A love affair caught in the routines of family and daily life, a truthtelling that dances with the winter, the fantastical poetry of rob mclennan at above/ground press.

Available @ above/ground press.

Genre: Poetry, New Age