thepoets

I’m looking at my signed edition of this book, courtesy of the writer herself from a Word On The Street event in Toronto a few years ago. I loved the book then and I still love it now. This collection of poems by Halli Villegas is full of wit, while at the same time a piercing read about our deepest emotions in life. Even the artwork is great, with the front cover having a great artistic rendition of her poem “Cone at King and Bay”.

The first poem in the collection entitled Pear Tree has the searing line:

we berate each other
for not (as we had sworn to do last year)
raking up the fruit

before
it had a chance to rot

There’s the poem Change in the Weather about lunch in a big city, and the verse:

Women push up their skirts,
expose winter white thighs.
Men loosen collars noosed by ties.
All close their eyes, pretend
a lunch hour is a life.

There’s the poignancy of her poem One White Violet:

Note my lover’s footprint in the snow.
Fills with slush,
melts away into the earth, sprouts
one white violet.

There is immediacy to Halli Villegas’s poems rooted in the modern lifestyle we live. However, there is a tugging back to youthful memories as well in her work. This is evident in poems like Feuillton, I Used to Want to be a Nun, and Three Deer.

Halli Villegas’s Red Promises is a work that promises you reading satisfaction. It is poetry that is concise, clear, compelling, and capable of fueling your own musings about life. Published in 2001 by Halli Villegas and Guernica Editions Inc. it is poetry done well.

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