Books

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George McWhirter | Anachronicles | Gazelle Books

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This is a collection of unusually rich poems that are both proto- and post-colonial. The title itself — melding the two words “anachronism” and “chronicle” — points to how the poems explore events and exchanges in one place from two points in time. The place itself is La Audiencia Beach in Mexico. Instead of portraying history only from the present looking backwards, McWhirter also has the past looking forward to foresee and comment on what is to happen as a result of the early exploration. Here, Hernán Cortés and his Lieutenant-Conqueror of Colima, Sandoval, appraise the antics of Bo Derek and other stars as they make the movie 10 — on the same beach where four hundred years earlier their crews built three brigantines to explore what is now called the Sea of Cortez. The verse-logs then follow explorer Don Caamaño and his successors up the Pacific Coast to where John McKay (aka Sean McKoy), an Irishman, was left to recuperate from a sickness among the Nootka/Nuu-chah-nulth on Vancouver Island. The final poem, “Hops,” retells the Irish legend of the goddess Liadan and the poet Cuirithir, whose voices travel to one another from Canada and Ireland. The dialogue travels from the end of the last millennium to the 1950s, highlighting their present-day divided Christian-pagan roles as mortal man and woman in holy orders. Continue reading →

Shane Rhodes | The Bindery | Gazelle Books

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This third collection from acclaimed poet Shane Rhodes is full of poems to be felt, to be underlined, to be whispered, to be dog-eared and talked about. Tracing themes of travel, love, personal and collective history, “The bindery” combines lyrical poetry with experimental verve. These poems were composed from hurried scribbles in Mexican bus stations, meditations on street corners in Buenos Aires, letters from friends in the Himalaya, and odes from the Canadian hinterland, and emphasise how “to be stained by what we see”. “Before his first collection appeared, what I saw of Rhodes’ work was made up of “great lines in good poems,” and, with each new publication, has steadily improved. Rhodes has always managed to maintain a loosely-restrained lyric, pulling between that and the underlying (barely contained) energy that runs through his lines, but the pieces in The Bindery are far more refined, and fuse the two far better than anything he has accomplished previously.” — Rob McLennan Continue reading →

Diane Guichon | Birch Split Bark | Gazelle Books

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In her debut collection of poems, Birch Split Bark Diane Guichon uses a quintessentially Canadian image — a birch bark canoe — to speak of those private waters that make us universally human. By writing in the first person of a father, a mother, a son and a daughter, she bridges age to gender, myth to memory and hatred to reconciliation. These poems are brave and brilliantly voiced and her descriptions are as haunting as a loon’s concerto on a silent summer lake. Guichon’s characters speak to the plurality of Canadian identity; in four distinct voices, Guichon pulls apart the myths that have created us and continue to dictate who we must be. Birch Split Bark proves that canoes will always write history upon their waters just as poets will write humanity upon the page. Continue reading →

Stanley Nelson | City of the Sun | Gazelle Books

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Stanley Nelson is considered by many to be the foremost avant-garde poet of his generation. In his third collection, Nelson once again demonstrates the validity of that claim with four new long poems, City of the Sun, Fragrances, Genesis Vibes and Heidegger. These poems deal with deep archetypes, science and religion in a manner that is simultaneously deconstructive yet formal. Stanley Nelson continues to present us with his unique vision of the possibilities of poetry in this latest offering. Who else could combine the courtesans and the old testament with jazzy music and quarks? Continue reading →

Ralph Sneeden | Evidence of the Journey | Gazelle Books

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This rich collection of poems explores family history, personal narrative, and man’s relationship to the natural world with an exacting eye and curious, searching spirit. Ralph Sneeden’s voice is accessible and honest, with a sense of wry wisdom that derives from his deep respect for the landscapes of New England and the shores of Long Island, New York-the terrain of his childhood, and the basis for his artistic vision. The book is the poet’s attempt to understand, through song and speech, elegy and observation, the personal and historic wars of a uniquely examined life. Continue reading →

Gilles Cyr | The Graph of Roads: Selected Poems 1968-1999 | Gazelle Books

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Though Gilles Cyr’s work is rooted in the act of seeing it is not content merely to remain with what is seen; it is not nature poetry, but goes on to encompass the nature of seeing. While nature poetry exploits its material, Gilles Cyr’s expresses wholeness, it makes the necessary connection between what is seen and what is seeing. Ultimately sight manifests itself, at the human level, in speech, and that is where the poetry comes from. Cyr, however, sees it as his job to send us back to where it all began.” — Yann Love-lock Continue reading →

Erin Keane | The Gravity Soundtrack | Gazelle Books

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As entertaining as it is compelling, “The Gravity Soundtrack” will please both frequent and new readers of poetry. In this debut collection Erin Keane explores subjects ranging from classic myth, philosophy and religion to rock ‘n’ roll, pop culture and children’s book characters. These poems are finely crafted, with a ‘confident and alert use of language’ (Greg Pape), and each one shows keen insight into what it means to be human. In “The Gravity Soundtrack”, the poet is not a voice from above passing truths down to the reader, but rather is right there with us in the muck and mire of human experience — all along showing great compassion for our questioning, our losses, our uncertainty. Continue reading →

Matt Rader | Living Things | Gazelle Books

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Written in the year after the birth of Matt Rader’s first daughter, “Living Things” honestly introduces the contradictions of the modern world: “how what we see in daylight is less than whole / and also more so”. Using words in lieu of sonar, these poems bounce off the ecology of “shabby saturated grasses” and “panther-eyed armies salal” and locate both author and reader within a literary geneology, Matt Rader’s poetry brings subtle slowness to a chaotic, fast-paced environment. It is both celebration and documentation of this world and its relationship to all living things. Continue reading →

Eric Cole | Man and Beast | Gazelle Books

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For Irish-born poet and zookeeper Eric Cole the fourteen lines and rhythmic patterns of the sonnet echo the very building blocks of life. Within the basic structure of simple genetic material lies the limitless potential for the existence of all living things, be they man or beast. So, too, within the simple structure of the sonnet, there is a similar universe of untold possibilities. Now, in these robust and stylish poems, the mysteries of the animal kingdom are explored with genuine scientific curiosity and rendered with tenderness, stimulating language, and unmistakable Irish wit. From the reviled Portuguese man o’ war to the glorious hyacinth macaw, from the elusive snow leopard to the bizarre pangolin, and even to the human animal itself, Cole demonstrates how life exists in inexplicable but nonetheless indispensable variety, and this collection serves to remind us what we stand to lose if we fail to appreciate the small states of grace that befall us in the disappearing natural wonders of our world. Continue reading →