Going Home: Essays

By: Tim Lilburn

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Synopsis: Like his contemporaries Robert Bringhurst, Ronald Wright, Dennis Lee, Don McKay, and Jan Zwicky, Tim Lilburn has long been a deep thinker on issues of ecology and writing, and on how the two fit together philosophically, morally, and ethically. In Going Home, Lilburn addresses how we relate (often uneasily) to our physical landscape in Canada and the United States.Retrieving an almost lost strand in the Western intellectual tradition -- the erotic, contemplative strand, from Plato to John Cassian to the Areopagite -- Lilburn traces a history of eros and desire in the hope that this exercise and its awakening can lead us home to a full residence in North America. Surprising and enlightening, the collection finishes with two unforgettable personal essays, where Lilburn writes about his effort to enact desire in the place where his ancestors are buried, the flatlands and coulees of southern Saskatchewan.