Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall: Selected Poems 2015-2020

Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall: Selected Poems 2015-2020

This is not a book about healing. Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall is a brutally honest collection of contemporary poetry that moves through love, addiction, war, loss, and the quiet moments where a life begins to fracture. Written in a voice that refuses ornament and rejects comfort, Andrew Lafleche strips poetry down to its most dangerous form: truth without anesthesia. Across more than 200 poems, these pages explore: the aftermath of war and the psychology of survival - addiction as ritual, refuge, and slow erosion - relationships that collapse under the weight of honesty - the tension between faith, nihilism, and meaning - the small, daily negotiations required just to keep going Some poems are a whisper. Some are a confession. Some feel like they shouldn’t have been written at all. And that’s exactly why they matter. If you’ve ever: stared at the ceiling at 3:00 a.m. wondering how it got this far - mistaken numbness for peace - stayed when you should have left - left when you should have stayed —you’ll find yourself somewhere in these pages. Perfect for readers of: Rupi Kaur - Ocean Vuong - Charles Bukowski - Michael Faudet - Atticus …but written with a sharper edge, darker honesty, and no interest in pretending things get better just because they’re supposed to. Not all poetry is meant to comfort you. Some of it is meant to tell the truth. "Consistently striking and leaves my mind a whirl." -Ella Jane Myers, editor & publisher, Open Minds Quarterly "Andrew Lafleche is an honest and courageous writer. There is an eyes-wide-open accuracy to his work, no matter the subject matter.Hemingway once said of writers he admired: 'They're true gen,' meaning they were the genuine article, writers he considered incapable of deceit, and incapable of playing dumb. Andrew is a True Gen writer." -Ron Corbett, award-winning journalist, broadcaster & author of the Frank Yakabuski crime novels "The subject matter of the collection is quite powerful." - McClelland & Stewart "Filled with tragedy and remorse." - Ronsdale Press "Spare in its use of poetic conventions, but startling and vivid in its imagery. Each of its core images will stay burned in my memory for some time to come." -Kimmy Beach, author & poet If you come across two people in an argument and you're not sure who istelling the truth, the person trying to silence the other most certainly is not. This collection is for all those left behind. Spring At Wander Hill Needles-- green confused with grey-greens, lift with the sharpening dawn. The last constellations stand guard in the western eggplant sky: Pyxis, Vela, Centaurus, assuring order at the boundary of night. The marsh, a bin of cattails, captures the early light, suspends it like a web 'cross paperback trees, ephemeral as an overdrawn thought--obscuring reflections. Yellow anemones sprung from the stone foundation of a tiny, stove-heated home, accent its windows, shutters peeled back to reveal the octothorpe muntins reddening beneath the first colour of sun. Two phoebe's, arranged in tandem on the clothesline--flit off and return in some peristeronic choreography, sing: fee bee fee bee, wit-wit-wit. Even the piffling birds--the purple finch, the field and house sparrows, others--are busy among the slanted grass bootlegging linseed. Weed seed; a hint of vinegar livening the air. The lilies and rhubarb muscle through the frozen earth--frozen no more--bestial or stoic in their rise, far too early to tell. Only sparse evidence of winter's carapace remain: A single patch of snow on the hillock making a hasty retreat into the dark woods to escape as a rivulet down the north face slope; The dead leaves have yet to be reborn on the limping branches from which they were brushed; And, the deer are not here--nor have the black bear and her cub emerged from their lethargy; but they will. The dissonant timber in the woodshed are sounding so. Witness I promised myself to remember it as it was: rain. lots of rain; seven days if it wasn't a month. animals lined up two-by-two; the ones in the lake, drowned. Edison sparked a light bulb, fried his hair like Einstein; Seinfeld took the stage as Jesus wept. a woman from 2045 turned a milk crate upside down middle of the grocery asked if there were a soapbox instead-- said the Leaf's would claim Lord Stanley's Cup--Gord would rise from the grave to play one last show --and not to get on the Ark; for leaks, then walked out of the store w/o being paid any mind. busy busy busy all the buzz a notification re: malware infected WiFi a last glass of wine is this divorce 3 or 4? another last glass of wine, out. I think that's accurate. ANDREW LAFLECHE is the award-winning poet and author of No Diplomacy, A Pardonable Offence, and Ride --among other titles. His work uses a spoken style of language to blend social criticism, philosophical reflection, explicit prose, and black comedy. Lafleche received an M.A. in Creative and Critical Writing from the Uni