What the Soul Doesn’t Want is a new collection, the most recent of 17 books by Lorna Crozier. Five of her poetry collections live on my bookshelf and are frequently pulled off and carried to the oversize, plaid wingchair in my library/office to be read again. However, the poems in What the Soul Doesn’t Want are new to me; I haven’t had the time to ponder them, to return on a different day in a different mood to discover what they might offer. But it’s easy to see they are pure Lorna Crozier.
She writes with quirky wit and sensitive awareness. For readers, the poems provide pleasure and insight and the simple joy of the words she chooses. Her themes in What the Soul Doesn’t Want haven’t veered from past work, but the tautness and edginess are sharper here.
She draws from nature and not always what you might expect. In “Cockroach,” we get the sublime: “they creep from the baseboards, / climb the couch and burrow in her hair” which makes me involuntarily shudder. But I also learn that “In Japanese it’s gokiburi,” a word I expect my grandson teaching in Japan will be interested in adding to the personal dictionary he’s creating. Reading Crozier, one finds clear images and science next to odd bits of trivia and a telling that will cause you to smile and to think (even as you might shudder).
Aging and time are Crozier themes. My favourite poem in What the Soul Doesn’t Want is “When the Bones Get Cold.”
My husband sends me hummingbirds
from his eyes. Only he and I know
he’s going blind….
I am made beautiful by loss. The moon, too,
…
There’s a sweetness
that comes from accepting what I am,
not a mountain, not a river, not a tree.
Grief also ripples through her poems. In “Algorithm: The Way Out,” Crozier writes: “…Grief’s / a snowdrift that thickens / as you walk.” How simple. How brilliant. How true for all of us who have known sorrow and deep snow. It is this universality and, perhaps, the lightness (and the light) that gets the writer and the reader through the tough stuff she doesn’t shy from.
Crozier is an Officer of the Order of Canada, the Governor General’s Award for Poetry, and a three-time recipient of the Pat Lowther Award. After a long teaching career, she is now Professor Emerita at the University of Victoria (British Columbia). She must be the envy of poets everywhere.
Lorna Crozier’s books are all available through your local bookstore or online: What the Soul Doesn’t Want
Kathryn MacDonald 
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