No Time Under the Sun

by Aiden Garabed Farrell

Aiden Farrell s No time under the sun strikes an incredible balance between innocence and maturity. One has the impression of looking at human experience through the eyes of a bearded old man who somehow remembers the electric emotions of youth. Love, regret, anger, violence, and happiness are all approached with wonderment and technical mastery. After reading this collection, we should all look forward to seeing Farrell s future work as he grapples with the million things that have escaped into history. ( Self of the after noon ) Brian Brazeau -Academic Dean A mystical, mysterious and enchanting journey into the self ..One feels light and youthful upon reading these poems. Maryama Antoine-English Teacher Aiden Farrell's collection of poems is impressive as it drums its way--literally--through familiar forests, across rain-drenched streets, and up into the imperial home of the clouds. His fine-tuned ear is magical in his poetry--he skillfully employs internal rhymes, alliteration, and consonance while creatively managing syntactical structures in poems such as "Summer," "Celebration of the Eternal Dawn of Moon and Sun," and "No Time Under the Sun" that show his experience as a percussionist. Even more impressive is the range of fresh and striking images that flow from his pen to accentuate traditional themes of innocence ("Woman and the Wide Open Sky Above") to defiance ("Watery" and "Cut Me Up") to celebration ("Skin") and finally to loss (the elegaic "Jean"). In today's environmentally-conscious world, Farrell's rich allusions to the natural world re-energize the call for preserving our maternal Earth, but in the end, his collection is about words and the power of poetry--words that may "disappear into the grasses" as he searches for them in the poem "Excerpt from Autumn Manifests" . . . and all throughout the collection, he talks of finding his lost words, but someone should tell him, "Your words have been there all along! Bravo!" It is apt, then, that the final lines of his final poem "dyeing" discover Farrell declaring softly that creativity arrives and makes his "thoughtlessness [and cloudy] windows [. . .] clear without a sound." John Kim- English Teacher Aiden has given us a collection which resonates with maturity of subject and voice. We can see the self emerging through the lines, vulnerable and joyous. Duncan McEarchen- English Teacher