Toronto's Michael Redhill is an impressive poet who for some years was known best for his third collection,
Lake Nora Arms, which explores the idea of interior travel, maps and myth, in that mysterious place, Lake Nora Arms. In 2001, though, his profile was raised with the reissue of
Lake Nora Arms and the publication of three new books: his fifth poetry collection,
Light-Crossing, his first novel,
Martin Sloane, and the anthology
Lost Classics, compiled with his fellow
Brick editors, Michael Ondaatje, Esta Spalding, and Linda Spalding.
In Light-Crossing, Redhill writes, in small prosy blocks, a guide to what exists around him. "We agreed love and sadness are the two things all people submit to. / I say to those things, Take me." Redhill writes of the city he lives in, Toronto, whether in "Commodore Jarvis," "College & Montrose," or "Yonge Street Is Two Hundred Years Old Today," where he writes, "This / was all orchards, my grandfather told me. / Apple trees with their black twisted limbs / against hills and Indian sky. Today, there's a man / holding his arm high in the air / empty hand cupped, plucking at nothing." Instead of creating a myth, Redhill finds the stories that are already there, pre-existing, on the surface or just under, like the story of his parents, still courting, as they "cross the buried river // that every living thing / drinks from, that runs / in their bodies." --Rob McLennan
