While Carmine Starnino’s debut covers much ground — translations of Italian poets he has admired, monologues by characters in the New Testament, meditations on Caravaggio’s religious paintings — it is his examination of his immigrant family that demands the most admiration. “The New World” offers the reader an unforgettable glimpse of one poet’s cultural inheritance. Continue reading
Nothing…is more difficult than comic or light verse. In The Mulberry Men Solway largely succeeds in this demanding and delicate genre. — Canadian Literature Continue reading
This exciting collection of contemporary Canadian poetry includes work by Don Coles, Rhea Tregebov, Ann Diamond, Marie-Claire Blais, Peter Dale Scott, David Solway, Jan Conn, Robert Allen, Doug Beardsley, Arthur Clark, William Furey, Michel Garneau, Susan Glickman, Gerald Godin, Carla Hartsfield, Elisabeth Harvor, Charlotte Hussey, Ross Leckie, Laura Lush, Errol McDonald, Muhammad al-Maghut, Robert Melancon, John Reibetanz, Richard Sanger, Stephen Scobie, Ricardo Sternberg and George Ellenbogen. Continue reading
Histories is an eclectic and unusual poetry debut from the author of the creative non-fiction work Wardlife: The Apprenticeship of a Young Writer as a Hospital Clerk published to acclaim in 1999. From the medical history to family history, Histories reveals a poet of multiple personas and postures. Continue reading
Bliss Pig and Other Poems represents the formidable writing talents of two members of the popular trio of poets known as Uncritical Mass. Toronto’s Linda Stitt has published five volumes of poetry. Charlene Jones, a professor of English, has been published in several Canadian and American journals. Together they read to enthusiastic audiences across Canada. Continue reading
In this new collection, George Ellenbogen presents a canvas that includes a variety of inhabitants–the restless wife of an East African planter, a Yugoslav victim of brutality, a Holocaust survivor, a Lebanese immigrant, and an aging hockey goaltender–all of whom come to realize that in exploring the trauma of places they considered their own, they are formulating their own exile. Continue reading
These poems give a heightened sense of the everyday. By focusing on the reality of familiar things, they reveal how we are constantly being reborn in different ways. Morency’s subtlety of language gives us a heightened sense of the everyday that tells us something about our humanity. By focussing on the reality of familiar things, he reveals how we are constantly being reborn in different ways. In every word and every phrase nature is present in Words that Walk in the Night – even in the city. But Morency’s poetry is never a restricted view of “city” or “nature.” He shows us that just as we can inhabit a landscape, we can also inhabit poetry. Continue reading
For Tregebov, writing is mapping — tracing the outlines of what is there with humour, wonder, bemusement, and great clarity. Continue reading
Challenging modern America’s perspective on love history, and race relations, these poems deviate from such techniques as free verse and abstraction to concentrate on structured forms such as odes and Italian sonnets. The unifying idea of the book also comes from the classics: the poet views black artists as Prometheus figures, giving fire and inspiration to American culture even when they are barely acknowledged. The poetry’s message, however, is gritty and emotional — and sometimes deliberately sentimental — as it pits the joys of love, romance, and racial pride against the sorrows of slavery and segregation. Continue reading
Ricardo Sternberg’s writing is controlled and superb. Fairy tale-like pieces rest happily next to probing looks at the urban psyche; whimsical pieces about childhood mesh with harsh, adult realities. Sternberg’s poetry has appeared in the best of this continent’s literary journals–Poetry [Chicago], The Paris Review, The Nation, American Poetry Review, Canadian Literature, Ploughshares, The Virginia Quarterly, among others. Continue reading