The White Light of Tomorrow

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A masterful new collection from award-winning poet Russell Thornton. With intense lyricism, Thornton records his imaginative movement between the element of water, waking to “the aloneness of water, ” and the phenomenon of light, comprehending “light” as “fate” and “love” as “memory of light.” In the process, Thornton highlights how hard lives can manifest beauty and affirmation. A mother transcends degrading circumstances through laughter. A long-lost father’s drafting set case is a “coffin, ” its tools a “skeleton, ” his “ashes are buried” in the poet’s “arm.” Revelations of nature abound. Thornton’s rainy locale lifts onto the mythical level, water “wrapping around” him, “holding” him “complete / as within womb water about to break.” Herons’ wings “span the countless characters” of a creek.” A description of an ancient BC site is a rapt engagement with Indigenous petroglyphs. An exploration of a Song of Songs passage details “light … one with turns of the yarn” of a shawl, “a touch within a touch.” Classical myth informs a poem about a power outage, the speaker enters “the elsewhere of the night” to build a fire. Passionate and moving, this collection marks a fine advance in Thornton’s expanding poetic output.