Book Review
Title: That Night We Were Ravenous
Author: John Steffler
Publisher: McLelland & Stewart
Released: September 2007
Pages: 128
ISBN-10: 07701082665
ISBN-13: 978-0771082665
$17.99 CDN 
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3 ½ Stars

Reviewed By: Kindah Mardam Bey (Ontario Correspondent - Canada) 

John Steffler`s career has landed him in the plummy position of Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate; which means that Steffler has the great advantage of bequeathing his lyrical expertise on our un-poetic lives. Perhaps the reissuing of his 1998 book of poetry might be connected to the Poet Laureate two year term? It would not matter if that was the instigating reason That Night We Were Ravenous was reissued. Poetry should be read and reread, it should be reflected upon, and dug up from a time whence it came, to be dusted off and reignited. 

I was immediately drawn to the title, That Night We Were Ravenous, as it can mean so many things; it taps into the unchartered darkness of the evening and incants a feeling of danger, sensuality, and animal instinct heralded by the term `ravenous.` However, that alluring intensity in the title gave way to what felt like a bizarre sense of literary sensuality, such as in the poem ‘Sea Coast Near Parson's Pond' "the silky hip emerging from the sand/those with boils/the vulva stones both pinched and eager, giant seeds." The poems seemed to be filled with awkward sexual references that were not sensual, nor seductive; instead, I was often verbalizing the term ‘...huh?' 

To be fair, sometimes Steffler creates the right balance such as in the poem ‘In A Makeshift Blind' "I abandon the corporation of myself./I do not sit down at my desk at nine O'Clock,/I do not dig into the pile of unfinished poems/or write to writers and editors......Do they ask you to pose in a daily/coffin?/Man-made gods always/want us to kill ourselves." I started to see where Steffler`s strength resides; a Byron he will never be, magnetically pulling the waves of his romantic oaths to the moon for future generations to sail away on. What Steffler can be is found in his poems about nature, earth, history and the tides of change; such as in ‘The Breeze Itself' "The breeze itself/breathes in and out,/finding form in the trees and grass/with a sound of releasing, a sliding/rush into dreams, into the past,/which is where the wind always lives..."

What I did find to be ravenous writing was in his ode to those gorgeous historical brick buildings that Steffler clearly has a kindness of heart and affinity for, which was beautifully put forth in the poem ‘Bricks, Faces, Words.' Steffler illuminates the elegance of such landmarks that are being ravaged by over population and mass expansion. If I were to tell Steffler where his focus should remain (and he probably wouldn't listen, as any self-respecting poet would not listen to a reviewer), as my Poet Laureate until the end of this year, I would want his poems to be of the beauty and magnitude of nature, paired with his clear understanding of the impending dissonance of greedy land developers.