In The Bones of His Being, Toronto-based poet Sue Chenette explores loss and what remains. She finds – in old photographs, in subtle exchanges, and in quiet moments – the skeletal shape of her dead father. Within the underbelly of grief, at the heart of loss, she also uncovers fragments of herself.

Chenette moves through the various stages of grief, sometimes tucked deep inside it, at other times accepting the notion of loss. In the poem “Night,” she writes, “whatever I felt at the lake, / what may have been only / a transport of grief, / has faded.” In “With Me,” she examines the symbols that embody her father’s memory: “when I see the hickory and white ash by the Humber, / or search the field guide for a new bird, / like the ovenbird we saw trailing a wing / through dry leaves on top of Old Baldy.” She recalls finding bound letters from Japan, reading Huckleberry Finn, transcribing family connections, and conjuring up nuances and exchanges as a means of paying homage to her father’s life.

Chenette’s background as a chamber musician – she has played piano with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Canadian Opera Company, the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, and Orchestra London – is evident in her poetic intonations. In “Spaces,” she compares breath to rests in a score, “hesitations shaped / by the edges of consonants / or a soft-trailing vowel.” In death, all memory becomes mythic poetry.

The Bones of His Being is a collection of loss and reconciliation, a symphony of grief. Longing for comfort, the poet asks, “What remains?” Her collection is, above all, a poetic attempt to distill memory.