Introduction

 Let me proclaim the colours
In my own way,
Without wounds,
Without scars,
And with only the most excusable errors.

– Goethe –

A collection of twenty-three sonnets, each based on a different colour of the spectrum, in the manner of the French symbolist poets.

Nestled on a bluff overlooking Crystal Crecent beach south of Halifax, with paper, pen, and a bottle of Irish whiskey (and the not uncommon misconception that, to be truly inspired, one must have a drink in hand), gazing across the slate sea toward the French coast, detecting Stéphane Mallarmé’s “white foam” in the breakers as they curled out of the cerulean horizon and crashed into the pebbled shore.

The poems in their first draft are raw and graceless.  One day, they will be revisited and reshaped.

The first of the revised poems, Orange, Indigo, and Crimson are posted.  Twenty more to go.