Two Bowls of Milk is the follow-up to Stephanie Bolster’s debut collection of poems, White Stone: The Alice Poems, which won the 1998 Governor General’s Award for poetry. Whereas White Stone was tightly conceived around a single subject, Two Bowls of Milk is a catch-all collection, including some of the author’s works from the chapbook Inside a Tent of Skin: 9 Poems from the National Gallery of Canada. The hodgepodge nature of this new batch of poems demonstrates both Bolster’s range and her continuity of concerns.

Much of the collection can be divided into two major subject areas: nature and art. The nature poems are either portraits (of blackberries, dead things, an iris) or landscapes (Deer Lake, White Rock, Joliette). The art poems encounter paintings by Jean-Paul Lemieux in the section “Deux Personnages Dans La Nuit” and works by artists such as Alex Colville, Gustav Klimt, and Colette Whiten in the section “Inside a Tent of Skin.” Both nature and art are well-trodden ground when it comes to poetic inspiration, yet the intricate steps of Bolster’s language and the unexpected leaps of her imagination allow these tired topics to seem inexhaustible in their mystery.

In the title poem, “Two Bowls of Milk,” Bolster writes that these objects “have nothing to do / with the moon,” that “they have no implications / of blindness, or sight.” These bowls reveal the delicate discrimination of Bolster’s vision, how, even with the recurring imagery (floods, ice, milk) and themes (exposure, resistance, fear, death), these poems uncover a freshness of subtleties. These are strong, supple poems, yet evocative, like earth-stained hands playing a game of catch underwater with a feather.