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A poet rediscovers the artistic passion of her youth-and pays tribute to the teacher she thought she'd lost.
About the author
Robyn Sarah is the author of eleven collections of poems, two collections of short stories, a book of essays on poetry, and a memoir,
Music, Late and Soon. Her tenth poetry collection,
My Shoes Are Killing Me, won the Governor General’s Award in 2015. From 2011 until 2020 she served as poetry editor for Cormorant Books. She has lived for most of her life in Montréal.
Summary
A poet rediscovers the artistic passion of her youth—and pays tribute to the teacher she thought she’d lost.
Foreword
Print run: 5000 Co-op available Advance reader copies North American TV & radio campaign National print campaign Online and social media campaign Excerpts in Lit Hub, Electric Lit
Additional text
Praise for Music, Late and Soon
"A deeply intimate exploration of the artistic process by a writer of remarkable maturity and poise. Unfailingly, her prose remains centred, rooted in humility, never drawing attention to itself. Her every word feels thoughtful, honest, and true. With this book, Sarah demonstrates that a life pursued artistically, when done so with sincerity and integrity, is a life lived spiritually, no matter what the discipline. Concert halls might be poorer for her career choice, but the literary world can count itself richly blessed."—Juror Statement for The Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction
"Her book is a gift to anyone who has left behind a pursuit and second-guessed that decision, though few of us could hope to have a teacher as inspirational as [hers] to coax us back into following our early passions. Describing their reunion, she writes: 'Momentarily, I’m flooded with that remembered sense of being in touch with something age-old, precious, mysterious, and profound (...).' It’s this profundity, the deep meaning of music, that Sarah captures so well in her beautiful and uplifting story."—Montreal Review of Books
"[Y]ou don’t need to be a musician, nor do you need to have aspired to be a musician, to appreciate Music, Late and Soon. Anyone who has ever felt a vocation for something, pursued it, misplaced it, then tried to summon it again is apt to identify with Sarah’s story."—Montreal Gazette
"Deeply interdisciplinary and challenging, it bears intimate witness as the internationally acclaimed Montréal poet reckons with the parallel strands of music and writing interwoven through her creative and inner lives."—Montreal Serai
"It is a luxury to read a memoir about music written by an excellent writer who happens to have spent the greater part of her life as a musician."—Musical Assumptions
“In this historic moment, a book about the courage required to reclaim and salvage creative desire through discipline is about as necessary as clean water and air.”—Michael Lithgow
Praise for Robyn Sarah
“Visual clarity, no-nonsense voice, compressed language, rhythmic prowess, and metaphoric agility. These qualities speak from a long-cultivated focus and bespeak a writer who pays fierce attention to the basic fact of being in the world.”—The Walrus
“As in her poetry, spare colloquial surfaces carry hidden depths ... subtle and suggestive, working on several levels at once.”—Globe and Mail
“Her distinctively digressive style allows Sarah to accommodate tremendous complexity in her stories … drawing us further and further down into the moment and at the same time showing us how the moment is textured by memory and experience.”—The Malahat Review
“[Her stories] lead us towards, and finally right into the middle of awarenesses that we hadn’t had before. They leave you feeling like this: suspicious that you’ve missed something, teeth slightly on edge ... there is a faint sound of excellently played music somewhere ... one may be failing in what one wants to do. What did that little piece mean? Will I read it again? The reader reads it again and experiences this network of feelings again, just like the first time. It is very powerful art.” —Hugh Hood
