Floating Up to Zero (Paperback)
Price 12.90 - 17.31 USD
In Floating Up to Zero, Ken Norris introduces us to âa traveller from an antique land,â though in this case that travellerâs story is not Shelleyâs meditation on the vanity of ancient kings, but rather the poetâs Âmeditation on the here and now, on the present moment, precariously balanced between a certain frozen past and an uncertain fluid future. Spanning a year in Norrisâs life, the centre of this poetic journey finds the poet trapped in his house. It is mid-winter, the thermometer reads 35 degrees below zero, and heâs trying to dig his way out to the world, where the blizzards and the city snowplows seem to conspire to undo all the pathways shoveled, the driveways cleared. His physical isolation turns him inward: âSurprised when anybody sees me. Iâve lived in the obscurity of exile. And now am deemed too old for practically everything. I fade into the wallpaper, with only my senses alive. Little by Âlittle you become an object to the world, then a useless object the day you vanish from sight completely.â He should have read the stars in the bookâs opening section more carefully: avoided the nostalgia for youth and lost loves; the illusion that we can vacation from our residential lease on life. Having âfaded into the background, years ago,â as season followed season, the poet begins to understand that the present is not trapped by the shape of the past, but open to the infinite possibilities the world offers us if we let our past melt away: âHow the wallpaper longs for whatâs in the room.â Meditative, incisive and light in their touch, these poems tell us: âThe old star charts were perhaps a little out of date. That is, new stars had since been found, though sometimes they were only streetlights, mistaken.â