Stone Rain

By William New

Stone Rain is a triptych that investigates what it means to see. In particular, the set of three lyrical sequences asks how the artist-observer, the urban witness, and the foreign traveler all shape the world as the site of story. In Storyboards, a Northwest Coast Mask Exhibit serves as inspiration for lyric poems in which the poet imaginatively recreates the encounter of early explorers with the aboriginal people and pristine coastal regions of the Northwest, and interweaves these with the artist's reflections on the mask exhibit. City Limits is grounded in the geography and culture of Vancouver. The poems in this section range across the entire territory of the urban landscape, and provide a close-up, finely ironic view of the city and its inhabitants. "Strait goods define the city's limits, shelled cliffs, salmoned reaches, firred forest, musselled shore" Bicycle Rack brings to sensuous life a city in China, as seen through the eyes of a foreign traveler. "One young lover pedals dreamily, his eyes inward. Perched side-saddle behind him, his girlfriend, legs crossed, polishes her nails."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0889821968
• ISBN13: 9780889821965
• Release Date: April 2001
• Publisher: Oolichan Books
• Length: 88 Pages