Like a Beast of Colours, Like a Woman

Like a Beast of Colours, Like a Woman is an explosion of verse from one of the country's hottest new poetic talents. Kaszuba's work is a deftly subtle presentation of the visceral and the natural, combining a photographer's eye for light and detail with the ponderings of a musing heart. Deeply embedded in the landscape of northern Ontario and the vast lakes, tough granite and majestic birch of that rich territory, she plumbs the depths of the land and of her soul, searching for the nutrients to sustain both. These poems beautifully address consciousness and spirituality as they are mirrored in the natural world; poems which in the storms and sunrises of life come to rest on the moments in childhood, friendships, and marriages which are the residue of memory. With spare language and a deft use of original imagery, Kaszuba captures a world both unique and universal, a sacred place with its own inherent ceremonies of reverence and forgiveness. Amid the tall grasses and gently lilting waves is a silence that speaks calmly in answer to our ceaseless barrage of questions and startles us with the realization that it has been there all along. Her verse surprises and with a burst of colours wakes you up as if from an enchanting dream, the taste of newly-kissed wisdom on your tongue.