Good-bye to the Sugar Refinery

In this her second book of poems, Patience Wheatley reflects upon her experience with the Canadian Women's Army Corps -- exploring her own coming-of-age and offering an historical testament to to the Canadian women who joined the Corps in World War II. The discipline of army drill "recalling crunching patterns / made by our feet on parade ground gravel / to sharp words of command" becomes in memory a time "when once we did it together and perfectly" -- an image of fulfillment both spiritual and sexual. A young girl's romanticism is later transformed, after marriage and children, to the "blessed revelation" that "love is / the predicate." Rich with sentiment, Wheatley's poems are never sentimental, but enlivened by honesty and wit.