The Red Canoe

In Jeanne Emmons's poetry collection, The Red Canoe, the canoe becomes a mode of both transportation and transformation and a metaphor for the mystery of the poetic imagination. The poems move between the point of view of the poet who owns the canoe and the consciousness of the canoe itself as it glides on the lake, bumps against the dock it is tied to, or lies on the bank beneath a blanket of snow. The canoe becomes an eye, ear, and mouth by which the world is perceived, taking in the seasons in succession and ruminating on its own limitations and dreams. Like the spider's web that forms in the canoe overnight, the canoe is a trembling net, ready to catch "the least sailing mayfly of possibility" that might become caught in its consciousness. The canoe craves recognition and attention, flirting like Marilyn Monroe, and smiling like a lipsticked mouth. But it also feels overexposed and wants to withdraw and retreat from the honking geese that surround it. Aware of how conspicuous it is within the muted colors of the natural landscape, it wishes not to be red, much as its poet owner is wary of being "read." The canoe is alone, yet it is half aware of an unseen force paddling it. It desires to be free, even as it knows that its very nature implies limitations. The canoe questions its urge to transmute reality, "does not know/ why everything has to be compared to be/ fully grasped," but is unable to stop itself from engaging in a "tangle of connections." The red canoe gradually emerges as a metaphor for consciousness itself and for not only the poetic imagination but also the human condition - aspiring, limited, and self-aware.