Turning dirt into jewels
by Jean Greenberg
January 2004
88 pages | ISBN: 0-919897-96-7
$15
 Turning dirt into jewels Cover |
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As a keen photographer, Jean Greenberg’s eye is trained to spot the bizarre or unusual in ordinary urban street scenes. As a skilled poet, she is able to turn her observations into lively, amusing, and often quintessentially urban poems. Although many of the poems are set in Toronto, Israel, South America, and Europe appear in her poetic snap-shots. By bringing disparate items into focus Greenberg creates a scene, and suggests, rather than beats us over the head with it’s subtle cohesion. A Chinese father playing with his child on a swing, a homeless man and the poet practising Tai Chi, and Greenberg shows us how a city takes life in an instant. The book is not divided into sections, so it moves along at full speed, taking the readers breath away with the rush of constantly changing images. Turning dirt into jewels is illustrated with the wonderfully quirky pen and ink drawing of Joe Rosenblatt, reinforcing the wonder of this debut collection.
Excerpt from Carrying pigs on Spadina
Did I see a man carrying two dead pigs today?
One hairless pink pig slung over each shoulder heads down trotters up
slung over each shoulder like two fur coats
Did I see a man with two furless coats slide into a Chinese barbecue house
On Spadina?
Did I see five women pass in front of him like ghosts?
Did I see five middle-eastern women covered from head to toe in brown
see five women with white-laced black veils glide in front of him
on wheeled feet?
(It was over so quickly.)
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