Behind the Arras: A Book of the Unseen

Behind the Arras is a haunted, luminous collection from the Canadian poet Bliss Carman, writing at the height of his mystical powers in 1895. These are poems that dwell in the liminal spaces: between waking and dream, between the living and the memory of those we've lost, between what we see and what we sense just beyond the curtain of the visible world. Carman's language is precise yet shimmering, grounded in nature yet reaching toward something transcendent. Time flows backward and forward in these pages; the moon becomes a dial by which we measure not hours but the erosion of joy and the persistence of longing. Some poems are elegies; others are invocations. All of them share a quiet urgency, as if the poet knows that beauty is fleeting and is determined to hold it still, if only for the length of a verse. This is not poetry for the impatient reader. It asks for stillness, for attention, for the willingness to sit with mystery. Those who give it that gift will find in these pages a strange and lasting comfort.