Read an Excerpt
A NAME, MANY NAMES
I knew you long before I saw you,
one thing inside another making itself up. Lightly,
snow fell, kept falling the night you were born —
like those prayers tied to branches by the Japanese —
scissored bits of paper,
each one a word:
a name, many names, loose in the dark.
Later you’ll need a name that’s door and window, roof and bed. You’ll need a name to foil the thief that comes to live in your heart. But now you need a name so diaphanous and small it takes its shape from air.
Anne Simpson is the author of three books of poetry, Light Falls Through You, winner of the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the Atlantic Poetry Prize; Loop, winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize; and, most recently, Quick. She is also the author of a novel, Canterbury Beach. She lives in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, where she helped establish the Writing Centre at St. Francis Xavier University.
A Word about the Poem by Anne Simpson
I wrote “Name, Many Names” after the birth of my first child. Snow was falling that night; it was a delicate, shimmering thing in the darkness. Visiting hours were over at the hospital, and even my husband had gone home. I was half-asleep, thinking about what it is to name a child, and I realized that I wanted my son to have one name for the world, and another name that was not for the world at all, but something else — a hidden name.
