Anne Simpson (1) (1956–)

Anne Simpson's Canterbury Beach is a first novel but is a thoroughly confident and accomplished work of fiction. Verna and Allister have been married for forty years and are driving from their Nova Scotia home to the Maine coast for the annual family vacation. Various of their offspring and a daughter-in-law are accompanying them. Extra baggage comes along too, in the form of grievances, secrets and half-formed intentions--the unexpressed complaints, hidden sentiments and bad behaviours that probably plague most families and which lead to heated discussions, hurt feelings, tears, tense silences and grudging reconciliations. One son--the troublesome Garnet--has let Verna know he might meet them at the cottage. Another son, Neil, has stayed behind to carry on an affair, though his wife Robin does come. Simpson displays a steady hand as her narrative jumps from one character to another, in each case providing a complete portrait so the reader understands how that person arrived at this particular point of their story, but never explaining or giving away too much. By the time the family assembles at the cottage in Maine, a lot of secrets have been revealed, but there is still much the reader would like to know. This expert withholding creates narrative tension and gives the novel its drive. Simpson, primarily known as a poet, writes clean, spare prose filled with memorable observations that reveals a lot in a glimpse or simple gesture. A fine work by a gifted writer and well worth seeking out.… (meer)

Loop, Anne Simpson’s second collection of poetry, strikes me as a deceptive book. The casual ease of its sonnets – a cycle of poems based on the aftermath of 9/11 and on seven paintings by Brueghel – and the spare loping of its couplets make it easy to overlook how carefully crafted these poems are. This is a real gift, I think. Not many contemporary poets can compose formal verse so naturally. Simpson’s terza rima about the Grand Canyon anachronistically revives a form more familiar in Shelley’s “Ode to a West Wind” yet one that is appropriate to a poem plunging back through geologic history to question what the canyon has seen.

Thematically, the book stays close to its central premise of repetition or return: every love arriving at its end, armies returning to their decimated cities, remembrances of childhood, the repeated steps of a dance, the cycle of activities among tenants of an asylum. In “A Moor, Rain,” Simpson writes about repeated domestic fights that finally stop. In “Mobius Strip,” she experiments with a new form, writing a bisected poem that endlessly returns on itself.

They’re lyrical poems, perhaps not stunning in the originality of their subjects, but satisfying, songlike and well made, with a store of images that ring true: “the heron lifting slowly – / with Churchillian effect – / into the air.”… (meer)