Leaning Willow

About the Book

Where many poets focus on what it is to be a certain type of human being in a particular contemporary situation, Leaning Willow is concerned with what it is to be human, period. Although the collection is unapologetically anti-modernism and all of its manifestations (materialism, scientism, consumerism, individualism, and democracy) and some of the poems have a bit of a bite, most of the pages reflect the author’s sense of faith, hope and love. Some of the poems reflect these concerns by addressing big questions such as the nature of time; others address the same concerns by describing a simple event, such as stepping out of a door. Some of the poems express the issues with cutting cynicism; others express the same issues with comic relief. One tool used by the author to create a longer pause or to allow for a second voice or echo to appear is to literally change languages. That is, in several of the poems a line or two of French or Latin a is used. One section of the collection opens with a quatrain in French and closes with its Latin translation, both brief recapitulations of a longer poem found in the opening section. One unique aspect of the collection is that there is a conscious effort to bury a loose story line so that a each section reacts to or extends the previous and the final poems revisit the first. In light of the West’s desire to militarily and economically transmit its "way of life" around the world, this collection questions whether that way of life is something that is worth spreading.

About the Author

Biography: Douglas Alexander Bors was born on the 25th of June 1950. He has moved around and lived in the Northeastern United States, Hong Kong, and the Canadian prairies, among other places. During his early twenties, Douglas began writing poetry, mostly as an exercise for himself. He was educated at the University of Florida, the University of Regina, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, where he is currently teaching statistics in the Department of Life Sciences. Douglas and his wife Eva have settled in Stratford, Ontario, Canada.