Description:
First Light, Last Light, the first book in six years by Glen Sorestad, one of Canada's best-loved poets, offers reflections on family, memories, and the not-always-pleasant aging process, viewed with compassion, wisdom, and humour.
Brief description: Glen Sorestad's poems have been appearing in print for more than fifty years. His poems have been presented in literary publications, in print and online, across North America and in many other countries, while being translated into at least eight languages. Among his many poetry books are two bilingual volumes, one English/Spanish and one English/Italian. Sorestad was named Saskatchewan's first Poet Laureate in 2000, becoming Canada's first provincially appointed Poet Laureate. He also spent twenty-five years as a co-founder and president of Thistledown Press, one of Canada's premier literary publishers. In 2010, he was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada. Sorestad and his wife, Sonia, live in Saskatoon. First Light, Last Light is his seventeenth book of poems.
Review Quotes:
'Glen Sorestad first came to prominence back in the '70s writing prairie pub poems. In 2000, he proved himself the perfect person to become Canada's first provincial Poet Laureate, and since then he has continued crafting fine poems full of telling details and warm humanity. In First Light, Last Light, he writes with sensitivity about friends and family, the present and the past. He knows the human situation, where people often carom through relationships like discs in games of crokinole. He understands the power of nature as crows and catbirds, jays and juncos, waxwings and chickadees flutter through his poems. And who else could turn an annual medical check-up into a literary seminar covered by Medicare? Yes, Glen Sorestad is still writing poems that will delight readers." - Robert Currie, Sasktchewan's second poet laureate
"Glen Sorestad's poems range widely in time and space yet ground themselves in an attentive dedication to the local, to home's dailiness: a red fox on the back lawn, 'vocal tabernacle' of robins, a snowy owl that causes a traffic jam in an urban mall's entrance. Alongside loss and grief, lives wonder, joy. The snowy owl poem's final lines aptly encapsulate Sorestad's poetic vision: 'hope manifests itself/in unexpected places, in wee but wondrous ways.'" - Jeanette Lynes, Author of Bedlam Cowslip: The John Clare Poems