Emily Isaacson

It was a clear night in Toronto.

The moon shone unto the wood floorboards

like a delicate child attempting a waltz.

The young Madonna cleared her throat,

and the canvas paused,

the brush stroking her finery back into position.

The water faucet trickled—

some water for her head, her face,

even the array of plants

created an oasis against the darkwood.

Now violet and watery,

her eyes glanced about, turning into huge rims.

Astor, in his eloquence, the loft his backdrop,

struck a medieval chord—

he painted on canvas

the Sainte Maria model,

but a street woman with long mahogany hair,

who stood on the corner.

Under a lamppost it worked

exceedingly well in moonlight,

so he lit a candle in the window

and kept her up all night.

Straight and tall, she reeled,

orchestral and divine, and

his mother’s dress did nothing

to faze her simplicity. 

--Emily Isaacson, "Maria Model" (Hallmark 2017)

Analysis: 

“Maria Model” stages a deliberate act of displacement. Although its imagery could easily belong to a European atelier—replete with Marian iconography, candlelight, and painterly ritual—Emily Isaacson situates the poem firmly in Toronto, anchoring it within a distinctly Canadian, urban modernity. The opening line’s plain declaration, “It was a clear night in Toronto,” resists romantic overture, yet what follows immediately unsettles realism: moonlight dances on floorboards “like a delicate child attempting a waltz.” This fusion of domestic interior and sacred imagination situates the poem in a temporal ambiguity that gestures backward even as it remains present. The poem feels less contemporary than its setting suggests, borrowing the tonal patience and reverence of the late nineteenth or early twentieth century—an era when art still carried devotional weight, even as it brushed against modern life.

The poem’s Madonna is neither icon nor abstraction but a living figure caught between canvas and street. Isaacson carefully dramatizes the moment of animation: “the canvas paused, / the brush stroking her finery back into position.” Art here is not inert representation but negotiation—between painter and subject, sanctity and survival. The domestic details—a dripping faucet, plants forming an “oasis,” candlelight stabilizing the night—anchor the sacred within ordinary necessity. This Madonna requires water, rest, and endurance; she inhabits the same nocturnal economy as the city itself. By reframing Marian imagery through the lens of an urban interior, Isaacson collapses the distance between sacred art and lived experience.

The figure of the painter, Astor, introduces a layered historical resonance. His “medieval chord” and choice to paint a Sainte Maria evoke the long lineage of Marian art, yet his model is explicitly “a street woman… / who stood on the corner.” This is a decisive ethical gesture. Isaacson aligns the sanctity of Virgin Mary with social marginality, insisting that holiness is not diminished by circumstance. The lamppost replaces the halo; moonlight substitutes for gold leaf. The result is not irony but continuity—a suggestion that Marian presence persists wherever endurance, dignity, and attention coexist. The city becomes a contemporary Bethlehem, unadorned yet luminous.

Within Hallmark (2017), a collection consciously shaped as Canadian literature, “Maria Model” asserts a national aesthetic rooted not in wilderness myth but in interior devotion and urban realism. The poem’s sensibility recalls a transitional moment—somewhere between the late 1800s devotional imagination and early 1900s modernism—when sacred themes were being reinterpreted through personal, often domestic lenses. That Isaacson chose Toronto over Europe is significant: it claims Canadian space as worthy of theological and artistic depth. As with much of her work, the poem quietly affirms that sanctity does not require origin myths or old-world authority. It requires only attention. By candlelight, through the night, the sacred is kept awake.

The in and out of a door closed

in the convent of St. Clare,

a clear and vestal melody,

and heart unopened, sealed.

The Assisi dome’s echoing nave,

the basilica, a mighty monument to freedom,

the thatched roof and poor hearth,

a dissident league away.

The beautiful banquet, set,

the fire of a heart without reprise—

to find a kiss,

just close your eyes.

--Emily Isaacson "Remnant" (Hallmark 2017)

Analysis:

“Remnant” (from Hallmark) is a poem of enclosure and radiance, shaped by restraint rather than excess. Written in spare, hushed lines, it inhabits the spiritual interior of Saint Clare of Assisi, whose vocation was defined not by outward movement but by holy refusal. The opening image—“the in and out of a door closed / in the convent of St. Clare”—establishes the poem’s central paradox: a life sealed off from the world becomes a conduit for melody, freedom, and love. Isaacson’s diction is deliberately minimal, echoing the rule of poverty Clare embraced; what remains is a “clear and vestal melody,” a chastened music that replaces possession with presence. Silence itself becomes an ethical stance, a form of resistance against the demands of spectacle and appetite.

Architectural imagery deepens this tension between monument and obscurity. The echoing nave of the Assisi basilica—situated in Assisi—is named as a “mighty monument to freedom,” yet it stands in quiet contrast to the “thatched roof and poor hearth” a league away. Here, Isaacson reclaims freedom not as grandeur but as renunciation. The poem refuses triumphalist sainthood; instead, it locates Clare’s radicalism in domestic humility. The convent door does not imprison—it defines a threshold where the self is relinquished. The “heart unopened, sealed” is not emotionally closed but consecrated, a vessel kept intact against the erosions of power and acclaim.

Formally, the poem’s brevity and measured cadence recall handcraft traditions—lace-making, embroidery, devotional needlework—where patience and repetition yield beauty through restraint. This aesthetic lineage aligns with Isaacson’s broader poetic practice, often described as a throwback to European devotional arts, where meaning is woven rather than declared. Emerging first in The Fleur-de-lis (her debut collection), “Remnant” already displays the hallmarks of her mature voice: disciplined lyricism, Marian and Franciscan undertones, and an attentiveness to women’s spiritual labour historically rendered invisible. That this poem was later gathered into Hallmark underscores its function as a foundational text—one that announces a lifelong preoccupation with sanctity shaped by quiet fidelity rather than spectacle.

Read within the arc of Emily Isaacson’s career—from her first publication in 2011 through her continued work in the rural, forested Fraser Valley near the Poor Clares, whose contemplative rhythm has long informed her imagination—“Remnant” reads as both homage and self-portrait. Like Clare, Isaacson has written from the margins: geographically removed from literary centres, committed to craft over trend, and attentive to the sacred residue left by devotion. The closing lines—“to find a kiss, / just close your eyes”—offer no romantic flourish but a theology of inwardness. Love, the poem insists, is not pursued outwardly but received in stillness. In this way, “Remnant” stands as a quiet ars poetica: a declaration that what endures is not noise, but consecrated attention.