Beyond This Dark House [Hardcover]

This first collection of poems by well-known fantasy writer Guy Gavriel Kay (Sailing to Sarantium, The Lions of Al-Rassan) is a mix of personal lyrics, travel poems, longer narrative pieces, and poems that reference various historical myths, especially those of ancient Greece. Many of the lyric poems concern Kay's relationships and separations. They are lightly emotive and at times bordering on the sentimental. The longer poems are somewhat stronger, especially the lovely, sad opening piece, which concerns a visit to Winnipeg, his childhood hometown, where "each address marks a grave" and his long-dead father has "more and more long years of being gone / still to come." The poems of travel are set in places such as Greece, Croatia, London, Cornwall, and Wales, and although they are poems of near and far, they always strike a personal note, being more about the poet's state of mind than the view from a window.

Part 3, which includes most of the mythological poems, is a classical forest of proper names that will send the reader back to Bulfinch's Mythology to seek clarification on Orpheus, Medea, Psyche, and others. The author is capable of some fine lines: "A song of loss . . . to bend the starlight / streaming to the world" and "He thrills to the tight hum / of the right words coming." Too often, though, the poems disappear into the personal and lack heightened language or complex rhythms. When Kay gets the tone right, however, with the perfect amount of low-key sentiment, sadness, or ebullience, as in his longer poems, the result can be engaging. --Mark Frutkin

. . . Kay has a gift . . . reading his poetry is like lifting a seashell to one’s ear and hearing the distant echo of the ocean where it was born. -- Alma A. Hromic, SF Site, May 5, 2003

. . . these poems celebrate imaginative connection: to people, to place, and to both private and cultural history. -- Winnipeg Free Press, March 23, 2003

Kay’s images are translucent, his poetry modern in form and yet with an instinctive in innate classicism which speaks to me. -- Alma A. Hromic, SF Site, May 5, 2003

Before Guy Gavriel Kay became known for his groundbreaking works of speculative fiction, establishing himself as one of the world's most respected writers in that genre, he was an accomplished poet, his work appearing in major literary journals such as The Antigonish Review and Prism. Through the years, while writing his dramatic international bestsellers, Kay has continued to quietly explore the paths and boundaries of poetry as well.

Now for the first time, Guy Gavriel Kay's poetry has been gathered and selected for publication. For those familiar with his fiction, the poems in Beyond This Dark House will resonate for their linguistic and emotional nuances and their mythologi-cal allusions, echoing and illuminating themes of his fiction.

But readers of contemporary poetry will also be captivated by the exquisite craft and power of these poems. Some are ironic and austere, slyly tracing the interplay of writer and world, present and past; others are sensual, even erotic, charting the mercurial but abiding nature of passion-in love, in language, in history.

Guy Gavriel Kay is the author of nine novels: The Summer Tree, The Wandering Fire, and The Darkest Road (which comprise The Fionavar Tapestry); Tigana; A Song for Arbonne; The Lions of Al-Rassan; Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors (which comprise The Sarantine Mosaic); and, most recently The Last Light of the Sun. He is also the author of the acclaimed collection of poetry Beyond This Dark House. His work has been translated into twenty-one languages. He has twice won the Aurora Award, is a three-time World Fantasy Award nominee, and is the recipient of the International Goliardos Award for his contributions to the literature of the fantastic. Guy Gavriel Kay lives in Toronto.

Her Own Excellence

Novi Vinodolski, Croatia Her own excellence is not enough:
there’s a tightening of the mouth now,
thinning towards judgement
as this late-night discussion goes on.
It’s as if, after a childhood brilliant with promise
and a life tangled (inexplicably!)
with people who disappoint,
it will be too much to have been wrong
about him, as well. To have conferred
trust and confidence, intimacy really,
upon someone who will not agree with her
that teaching a child any religious tradition
is (inarguably!) an error amounting to abuse.

How not so, when warring faiths have filled
the long trough of millenia down to the earth's
deep core with bodies? She will not
let it go. He must agree, or say he does. A war
ended here not long ago. We drove through villages
in battle zones, saw the charred wreckage
of shelled farmhouses on the way to the coast.

Moonlight is on the sea outside but
the wind is like the mistral in Provence
(they tell me); it puts everyone on edge.
To carry this conversation anywhere else
tonight is as hard as, in the morning,
it will be to pull one heavy suitcase
out from under another in Neven’s trunk,
at the end of the long drive back
through the mountains to Zagreb.

Excerpted with permission from BEYOND THIS DARK HOUSE by Guy Gavriel Kay