The Exile S Papers The Duplicity Of Autobiography

The Exile's Papers, Part One, considers the implications of duplicity in autobiography as they appear in the first two hundred or so sonnets of a four-volume sonnet cycle completed over the past twenty years by the Lost Poet of the 1960s, confronted at the end of the middle game by anonymity on the one hand, and by opportunity the mass of a black hole on the other, in which Rilke, in his guise as Witness to the Angel, speculates on raw, necessary existence. Disney's Jiminy Cricket remains, of course, unconvinced.

This is the third installment in acclaimed poet Wayne Clifford's series of sonnets, The Exile's Papers, a project decades in the making and now recognized as one of the most inventive creative projects ongoing in Canada.

The culmination of decades of effort, Wayne Clifford’s The Exile’s Papers is a four-part poetic journey that explores narrative duplicity, familial and romantic relationships, the correlation between love, sin and life, and finally, the notion that human life cannot be explained—or saved. In this fourth and final volume of the sonnet sequence, Just Beneath Your Skin, the Dark Begins, the exiled poet adopts the role of the skeptic, calling into question religion and science, myth and history. Truth is subjective, beauty cannot be articulated, and redemption rests in the acceptance of one’s end. In this bleak, unfathomable, unknowable and inexpressible world, the exile’s struggles to live, to love, and to find meaning are bitterly honest and intimately familiar. With endlessly varying sonnets ranging from the surreal to the straightforward, the mythic to the narrative, this volume of The Exile’s Papers unequivocally proves Clifford’s mastery of poetic form.

The second work in a series of four that will eventually include 800 sonnets. The Face as its Thousand Ships continues where The Duplicity of Autobiography left off. Clifford maintains a deft ability to work the sonnet form. An exceptional work that functions as both an important cog in a series, and as a stand-alone work of art.

The culmination of decades of effort, Wayne Clifford’s The Exile’s Papers is a four-part poetic journey that explores narrative duplicity, familial and romantic relationships, the correlation between love, sin and life, and finally, the notion that human life cannot be explained—or saved. In this fourth and final volume of the sonnet sequence, Just Beneath Your Skin, the Dark Begins, the exiled poet adopts the role of the skeptic, calling into question religion and science, myth and history. Truth is subjective, beauty cannot be articulated, and redemption rests in the acceptance of one’s end. In this bleak, unfathomable, unknowable and inexpressible world, the exile’s struggles to live, to love, and to find meaning are bitterly honest and intimately familiar. With endlessly varying sonnets ranging from the surreal to the straightforward, the mythic to the narrative, this volume of The Exile’s Papers unequivocally proves Clifford’s mastery of poetic form.

As Shane Neilson writes in Margin of Interest, ‘Maritime poetry is the sum of what’s come before, a unique history, and yes, a unique place.’ In Margin of Interest Neilson examines representation, identity, power, and the politics of literary history, from the creative traditions of the Mi’kmaq to the work of young poets today. He pays due homage to iconic Maritime writers (Milton Acorn, Alden Nowlan, George Elliott Clarke), shines a critical spotlight on lesser-known masters from the region (Travis Lane, Wayne Clifford) and provides a glimpse inside the ‘diverse ecosystem’ of poets under 40 writing in or about the Maritimes (Rebecca Thomas, Lucas Crawford, El Jones). He also combats the prejudices so often applied to writers from Atlantic Canada—stigma associated with mental illness, rigid gendering, vernacular language and even poetic form—and advocates for a long-overdue reappropriation of the regionalist stance, as well as a proper recognition of the region’s writers and their contribution to the Canadian literary landscape. For as Neilson wisely asks, ‘What’s the matter with taking pride in any kind of regional identity that we articulate?’

In his sixties, Yeats published the half-dozen poems that drew Crazy Jane out from his imagination to act as a profane voice against the strictures of the Church and the mores of his age. Wayne Clifford, in his sixties, after a lifetime of wondering why Yeats offered so little explanation of Jane's human presence absorb his own imagination, has let Jane free to speak once more. In Jane Again, we learn why Jane is crazy, if indeed she is, what part her Jack has played in her passion, how she understands the nature of the divine, and who she insists herself to be in this world almost large enough to hold her. Wayne Clifford's Jane Again is bawdy, irreverent and humorous; it is also loving, moving and beautiful, and should help to cement Clifford's reputation as one of the most inventive versifiers to come out of Canada in years.