He Leaves His Face in the Funeral Car is elegiac, lyrical, ironic; a series of reflections, recollections; a collection about relationships-to family, clocks, water, trees, ungulates, endings-recognizing that not all relationships are straightforward: a mother's secret false teeth, a teakettle riddled with bullet holes, pears and small knives. To leave a face in the funeral car is to fall out of time, to fall into history, to ponder the meanings of dust, the quiet records of suicide. This is poetry that covers a broad range, wide and changing, the strangeness of everyday life buoyed by the solace of language, the pleasure of song. Each word in its right place, each poem reflecting beyond surface meaning.
About the Author: Arleen Paré is the author of seven collections of poetry, including Paper Trail (NeWest Press, 2007), Lake of Two Mountains (Brick Books, 2014), and He Leaves His Face in the Funeral Car (Caitlin Press, 2015). Her work has been short-listed for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and has won the American Golden Crown Award for Poetry, the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize, a CBC Bookie Award, and a Governor Generals' Award for Poetry. She lives in Victoria, BC.
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