Lesley Choyce, All Alone at the End of the World: Poetry Review

 Lesley Choyce’s latest collection of poetry includes pieces both anecdotal and philosophical. All Alone at the End of the World gives readers the sense that they are not alone at all, but sitting with an experienced storyteller who leverages his unique voice to make the poetry fly off of the page. Using wit and sharp diction, the speaker spins tales of the mundane into larger-than-life adventures that ensnare the attention of the readership.

Choyce has the capacity to create tangible imagery, vividly translating his lived experiences onto the page. Readers feel their hearts race while reading “Black and White Cat on Oxford Street,” a poem that is not profound in the subject that it treats, but which powerfully creates fear and then relief:

The cat is, I swear

in flight,

its trajectory taking it

straight into the grill of my car

when suddenly

it understands the density of its disaster,

angels grabbing at its claws midflight,

flipping it backwards

onto the safe hard comfort of the curb (19) 
With technical prowess, Choyce uses line breaks and enjambment to generate suspense, while alliteration highlights the main events of his colloquial story. The poet’s retelling makes an extraordinary poem out of an ordinary event.

All Alone at the End of the World transports readers to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and then takes them around the world. Building on themes of the universal, Choyce’s book is infused with philosophical poems that pull his readership out of their current surroundings, and invite them to join him on his journey of self-reflection. For example, he recognizes the complexity of identity in “Contradictions”:

This poem is not helping

To solve the threadbare mystery

of me, however,

and my desire to be here and now

but also scattered everywhere

and anywhere at once.

This is an ambitious poem

going nowhere. (21)

Building on a common issue, the speaker’s inability to solve the “mystery / of me” conjures a sense of empathy from readers. Mirroring the role of a mentor speaking to an acolyte, Choyce’s narrative relays a message reminiscent of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet:  “. . . be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue” (34-35). The playful tone creates the sense that the speaker accepts that his desire is unsolvable, even before stating that the poem is going nowhere; Choyce embraces his contradictions, and inspires others to do the same.

          Choyce’s All Alone at the End of the World finds beauty in seemingly monotonous aspects of life and encourages readers to look for splendors often taken for granted.

Works Cited

Rilke, Rainer Maria. Letters to a Young Poet. Trans. MD Herter Norton. New York: WW Norton & Co., 1993. Print.

by Benjamin Lord, with input from Monica Grasse, Sharisse LeBrun and Molly Strickland