The poems collected here, written over a period of more than forty years, are grouped in four sections, each representing conversations of which the greater part must remain invisible yet can be here and there surmised. Almost all were written in response to other persons, not only those most intimate, but also friends and even sometimes strangers of only brief acquaintance. The meaning of persons, I have found, is elusive but precious and compelling; there are some whose presence as gift remains a mystery, not conformable to category. My consciousness of the spectral presence in all such relationships of the one who is Author of all has led me to include halting moments in that ongoing dialogue in which holy Scripture is the prompting voice. For lack of a better term, I describe these utterances as prayers and meditations.
David Lyle Jeffrey, farmer, professor, and occasional poet, has lived and worked most of his life in Canada but has also taught at universities in the US, UK, and China. He thinks of poetry as fundamentally a conversational art, and for almost all these poems there is an invisible but very real interlocutor. Reading them therefore invites reflection on the myriad personalities of those others whose lives are here sympathetically invoked.
“David Lyle Jeffrey has one of the most eloquent and penetrating voices in contemporary poetry. The erudition and wisdom of this singular voice permeate every line of the verse.”
—Joseph Pearce, author of Death Comes for the War Poets: A Verse Tapestry
“David Jeffrey’s Translations is suffused with Dante’s theme: love moves through
everything. . . . We are enchanted by the elegance, sentiment, and high poetic art in these conversations and their delicate music as they move from talking to singing in the presence of love.”
—Lee Johnson, professor of English emeritus, University of British Columbia, and author of Poetria Nova
“Translations gathers love poems, lyrics on natural beauty, midrashic meditations on biblical passages, gifts to beloved family members, and responses to Chinese culture and history. It is a remarkably rich profusion of poems. What links them all is the author’s delightful combination of wisdom—the ‘latter blooms’ of a life devoted to study—and his childlike joy and wonder. David Lyle Jeffrey describes his ‘random acts of poetry’ as contributions to ‘an unfinished conversation in which only God could have the last word.’”
—Jeffrey Bilbro, editor-in-chief at the Front Porch Republic
“David Jeffrey’s Translations is an impressive collection of crafted, evocative meditations on love and nature, family and friends, faith and devotion. In ‘random acts of poetry,’ he has recorded poignant moments and memories which retrospectively testify to what has most touched—and translated—him. The dominant tones are celebration, gratitude, and praise; the experience is at once formalized and intimate.”
—David A. Kent, editor of Christian Poetry in Canada
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