American Reel

Literature & Fiction

Sanger, Peter

Poetry

Pottersfield Pr

In this remarkable follow-up to Spar: Words in Place (Gaspereau Press, 2002), Peter Sanger explores the scope of words in time. Offering significant new material to the study of linguist Silas Rand and poet John Thompson, Sanger introduces Susan Barss and Florence Ayscough, notable but largely unsung contributors to Rand’s and Thompson’s work. With the same passion for reading and exploration, along with several of the neighbourhood landmarks, symbolic imagery and literary influences that first emerged in Spar, Sanger joins the lives and work of key authors and translators in Canada’s literary history. Sanger’s unique and far-sighted approach to words and time illuminates critical intersections between authors, readers and texts. “White Salt Mountain is a mystery,” says Sanger. “The consistent theme of the book is the source and meaning, at the most profound levels, of its title. This book fits into the literary category also occupied by Poe’s ‘Gold Bug’ story and more recently by A. S. Byatt’s Possession about the detection of the real life of a Victorian poetess and the parallel life lived by the modern detective literary scholars. . . . The reader of White Salt Mountain participates not only in the detection of a phrase but also in discovering Florence Ayscough and Susan Barss, discovering certain feminine continuities in Canadian cultural history which had been lost. . . . At base, White Salt Mountain is structured according to the most ancient of narrative formsthe quest for hidden and lost treasure. Its Shangri-la is St. Andrew’sits Treasure Island rests in the Bay of Fundy” On a journey to MacMaster Island in Passamaquoddy Bay, New Brunswick, Sanger introduces the work of nineteenth-century translator and poet Florence Ayscough. He provides the first comprehensive account of Ayscough’s life, including her years in Shanghai, her study of Chinese, her collaboration with American poet Amy Lowell on translations of Chinese poetry, and the influence of these translations and others on the Canadian poetic idiom that persists today. Sanger’s work illustrates the power words carry across time beyond their volumes. In his discussion of New Brunswick poet John Thompson’s Stilt Jack, a collection that continues as one of the most widely influential works in Canadian poetry, Sanger works from inside and outside of Thompson’s words, bringing to life the poet’s guiding mythology and influences, and testing them in transit and in conversation with other texts. Sanger’s final chapter begins in a canoe on the Shubenacadie River as he sets out to locate ‘Grandmother’s Place’, described in Silas Rand’s Legends of the Micmacs. Sanger also presents his recent discovery of Rand’s original transcripts of two stories told by Susan Barss in 1847, among the earliest surviving records of Native storytelling in North America. Sanger’s sleuthing, and the kinds of parallels and intersections it brings to light, embodies a departure from the conventions of literary criticism into a style of reading that is grounded in locale and attuned to the way a literary culture takes shape over time. Peter Sanger has published five collections of poetry, including Earth Moth (1991) and Ironworks (2001), a collaborative project with photographer Thaddeus Holownia. His most recent work is Spar: Words in Place (2002), a collection of essays based on life in rural Nova Scotia. Sanger has been the poetry editor of The Antigonish Review since 1985. He lives on a farm in South Maitland, Nova Scotia. The trade edition of this book is a 5 x 8-inch, smyth-sewn paperback bound in card stock with a letterpress-printed jacket. The text is printed offset on laid paper.

White Salt Mountain: Words In Time

History & Criticism

Gaspereau Pr

This is a story about two stories and their travels through the written record. The written part begins in the mid-nineteenth century, when Silas T. Rand, a Baptist clergyman from Cornwallis, Nova Scotia, took as his task the translation of the Bible into Mi’kmaq  the language of the indigenous communities in the region. In the process of developing his vocabulary, Rand transcribed narratives from Mi’kmaq storytellers, and following his death, 87 of these stories were published in a book called Legends of the Micmacs. As his understanding of the language grew, Rand began to translate the stories as he heard them, and to record them in English. Until recently, it appeared that none of the early transcriptions in the original Mi’kmaq had survived. Then, in 2003, poet and essayist Peter Sanger uncovered two manuscripts among the Rand holdings in the library at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. One of these contains the story of Little Thunder and his journey to find a wife, as told to Rand by Susan Barss in 1847. The other is the story of a woman who survives alone on an island after being abandoned by her husband. It was told by a storyteller known to us now only as Old Man Stevens and dates from 1884. Both are among the earliest examples of indigenous Canadian literature recorded in their original language; the 1847 transcript being perhaps the earliest. Their publication in The Stone Canoe makes a significant contribution to our understanding of Mi’kmaq storytelling and indigenous Canadian literature.  With the same passion for research and sleuthing that characterized his two previous prose publications, Spar (GP, 2002) and White Salt Mountain (GP, 2005), Peter Sanger provides commentary that recounts the adventure of his discoveries and the paths of written correspondence, library acquisitions, name changes, transcriptions, translations and human error that separate and reconnect two stories and their tellers. He also unpacks some of the complexities of Mi’kmaq cultural motifs as they emerge in these stories.  At the heart of The Stone Canoe are the two stories themselves, including Rand’s published versions, along with new translations and transliterations by Elizabeth Paul, a Mi’kmaq speaker and teacher of the Eskasoni First Nation. Paul provides new English translations, and Mi’kmaq transliterations of Rand’s transcripts, as well as notes detailing issues of language and culture. The Stone Canoe also features artwork by Alan Syliboy, a Millbrook First Nation artist. Syliboy’s original ink drawings illustrate scenes from the two narratives, employing some of the traditional patterns in Mi’kmaq art, and work visually alongside the translations and Sanger’s engagement with the patterns contained in the stories.

The Stone Canoe: Two Lost Mi'kmaq Texts

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Books by Sanger, Peter