“Sing the celebration for us,” Jennifer Wenn importunes in the last line of the penultimate poem of her latest book Emergence. The closing section of this fine collection is dedicated to the poems of Sappho, who wrote the line as translated from the Greek by Paul Roche “love can make a poet out of us all”. And reading these sonant poems in this collection we all become poets of the tenth muse, singing our canticles of harmony in chorus with the voice of Wenn. The material is transformed into the lyrical, and we partake and find solace even in tragic moments. It is impossible to encapsulate and thereby capture the variety of themes in this book in a few short words of praise, so I’ll let Jennifer Wenn have the last word as she writes in her eponymous poem “Emergence”:
the truth will be honoured,
the silence ended …
John B. Lee,
Poet Laureate of the city of Brantford,
Norfolk County and Canada Cuba Literary Alliance