Corona Radiata
Share
Copy link
Corona Radiata is a meditation how an embryo becomes a human being. The title comes from the web of cells that arrange themselves around the egg cell after it is released from the ovary.
The book’s nine sections describe a series of journeys within journeys. Voyages to map a new world. Travels through time. Searches in the maze. Pilgrimages to a known destination. Random wanderings. The great migration of species repeated by the individual.
Corona Radiata is a small, beautifully made book with a woodcut designed by Nancy Ruth Jackson for its front cover. In its small dimensions, it embraces a large world.
Published by St. Thomas Poetry Series
ISBN-10 : 0968533930
ISBN-13 : 978-0968533932
Alice Major writes:
In some ways, Corona Radiata may be my favourite book. In writing this sequence, I found a voice clearing a space for it in my mind. The voice is partly that of the developing child, partly that of the world waiting to receive her—a synthesis of the world that is creating her, and the child who is creating a world.
Finding this place was a great joy to me. It became a nexus for many things that have interested me over the years: the science of the brain, the history and making of maps, folklore, fable and philosophy. It is a great pleasure to have the book published by St. Thomas Press. The series provides exactly the right size, format and spirit to suit this particular voyage
Experience a poem
Audio: Music (from “Ear”) – accompanied by Nora Bumanis
Audio: Homing (from “Head”) – accompanied by Nora Bumanis
Audio: Maps – accompanied by Nora Bumanis
Reviews
>> [Major] charts the fetus’s journey towards light with both the delight and the precision with which explorers such as Cook responded to the New World . . . Like Hopkins’s poetry, Major’s reminds us vividly of the ‘dearest freshness deep down things.’
- Letters in Canada, 2000
>> The conceit of gestation/parturition in Corona Radiata can be understood and usefully approached in three principal ways: an overall set of image clusters, as the poet does with her carefully chosen titles and arrangement of titles; the seeding and expansion (both quite apt to the conceit here) of a couple of general metaphors, notably those of art as making and word (logos) as message; and an often implicit echoing and reformatting of supportive biblical references.
- Antigonish Review, No. 128 (“Three from St. Thomas”)
Otain a copy
Corona Radiata is out of print. However, a pdf version is available here.
