Poetry Books

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Book SynopsisMikes Cowboy Tour - See Author Info

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Book SynopsisJune Green did not take up writing poetry until she was nearly 70, when failing eyesight robbed her of most of her customary activities and she needed some-thing else to pass the time. There was no thought of publication, and each subject was just what she happened to think of on that day, with no relationship to the other poems. It was immediately apparent that she had hit on an activity for which she had a natural talent, completely untaught, and as the poems accumulated it also be-came plain that some of them might be combined to tell a number of stories. Eventually she had many of the poems printed in two small booklets for family distribution, and the ones that dealt with her childhood on a Saskatchewan farm during the depression years were also published in a newspaper there, earning considerable acclaim. After her death at 83 it turned out that there were almost enough additional poems to print a third book-let and the decision was made to include everything, along with most of

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Blodgett shows that he has the courage to go way out on a limb when his poetics demand it.. Apostrophes II contains the finest verse I've read in a long time. In terms of technical excellence and intellectual excitement, I was reminded throughout of Eliot.... every poem stopped me cold with passages of such beauty that I simply had to reread them again and again." James Deahl, CBRA

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"[The] reissued What the Crow Said and The Words of My Roaring.honour Kroetsch's enormous contribution to Canadian literature and.ensure his work will be available to a new generation of readers." University of Toronto Quarterly, Winter 2001/2002, Letters in Canada, vol 71:1

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"The extraordinary beauty and vitality of Blodgett's poetry breathes world music: "the dance that dances us, of apples, grass and night"." Nancy Clasby, ARC, Canada's National Poetry Magazine"(Apostrophes IV).will reinvent all those favorite memories of summertime bliss.""To read Blodgett is to dislocate oneself from the world and go floating in the cosmos." Shawna Lemay, Edmonton Journal"There's a probing intellect at work beneath the often charming, even hypnotic, surface of these poems.. Blodgett is a master of the shimmering, choral effects language can attain.. Apostrophes IV is another rich and accomplished collection from a highly refined imagination." Harry Vandervlist, Quill & Quire

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Robert K offers readers a zanily brilliant and hauntingly austere series." Judith Fitzgerald, The Globe & Mail"Kroetsch shows how brilliantly a wily intelligence can slip the bonds of expectation to create surprising and challenging new work." Harry Vandervlist, Quill & Quire"Intellectually taut and supremely tricky." Shawna Lemay, The Edmonton Journal"This book of poetry is a trip--you do not want to miss it." Sheri-D Wilson, ARC: Canada's National Poetry Magazine, Summer 2002"In The Hornbooks of Rita K, acclaimed poet and prose writer Robert Kroetsch explored his own alter ego, as well as the idea that regardless of where or how far we wander from our roots, a little corner of home stays with us.... It is a rare treat to encounter an author whose work exudes the confidence to use language so playfully and still tell a story. Typically, Kroetsch laughs off any notion that he is widely regarded as an icon of Canadian literature. 'That's someone else,' he says. But no one else could have written The Hornbooks of Rita K." Vern Clemence, The StarPhoenix"Kroetsch's narratives are never traditional. In The Hornbooks of Rita K his story develops by accretion, or the slow process of sedimentation, as Raymond shuffles Rita's poems and his commentary into piles. This shuffling allows Kroetsch's playfulness to shine and offers its own occasion for wry commentary.... The Hornbooks of Rita K marks a welcome return of one of Canada's foremost poets." Richard Henry, SUNY Potsdam, World Literature Today"Of all the writers working in Canada today, Robert Kroetsch is perhaps the one who exerts more quiet influence than any other--and on a national scale. A superb mentor, a wonderful editor, and tirelessly generous to the literary community, Robert Kroetsch is a truly outstanding model and mentor as an artist, an intellectual, and an educator. Hundreds of students and writers can attest to his influence." Aritha VanHerk, University of Calgary"Renowned for exploring the external landscape (i.e., the prairie), Kroetsch focuses more on the internal landscape. Rita K reads more like a story with a beginning, middle and end....[I]t's Kroetsch at his finest and absolutely worth a read." Treena Kortje, Winnipeg Free Press"Rita's poem and Raymond's notes and emendations, a hall of mirrors in which Kroetsch himself does and doesn't appear, are a poetic anti-treatise, a comic primer and poignant meditation on versions of authorship and meaning, on what gets in and out through the back door of intentions, on what gets left behind on longing and lines around reflected eyes. True to Kroetsch's inimitable form, The Hornbooks of Rita K resists quotation and summary....[T]he book also contributes to fascinated reading and out loud laughs..." FastForward"Novelist, poet, essayist and teacher Robert Kroetsch is internationally known and justly celebrated as one of the fathers of contemporary Canadian literature....His latest volume, The Hornbooks of Rita K, continues to challenge the forms that limit expression." Coast Reporter"As novelist, poet, essayist and teacher, [Kroetsch] has introduced more of the seminal ideas that have shaped the postmodern growth of western Canadian fiction and poetry than any other writer--perhaps all other writers." Coast Reporter"Robert Kroetsch should be required reading for anyone seriously interested in the art and craft of poetry. Kroetsch should also be required reading for anyone who thinks poetry is no longer relevant, usurped perhaps by something hipper like rock and roll. Robert Kroetsch is a hip and sexy writer. Don't let the term sexy throw you off: I am referring to his use of language, his delight in things delightful and in the book's characters-the bereft, lovelorn Raymond and the acerbic Rita. Nor should you let the term "hip" throw you off. Kroetsch's writing is hip because it's very smart and still immensely readable. It's so good you can hardly tell." Nancy Jo Cullen, Alberta Views March /April 2002"The hornbooks are fragmentary texts, including both Rita's other, often unfinished poems and Raymond's rueful reflections on Rita's life. Numbered and presented out of chronological order, they build up to a picture of a life and also a story of a relationship....Over the course of the book, this project becomes an unsettling operation that creates oddly prismatic and shimmering effects without ever leading to a sense of securely knowing what really matters." Margaret Mackey, Contemporary Canadian Adult Books with Teen Appeal"The Hornbooks of Rita K is packed with ideas about the exchange processes, the sharings, that constitute writing. With a framework that allows such a variety of procedures, it is rich in ideas, modes and range. It is not at all surprising that it was nominated for the Governor General's Award." Australian Canadian Studies, Vol. 2, No.1"The Hornbooks of Rita K is Robert Kroetsch's radical continuation of an oeuvre that comprises nine novels, several volumes of poetry (see Complete Field Notes) and numerous critical essays....For newcomers to (post)postmodern Canadian writing, the complex Hornbooks - with a modern art flap-cover and shadowy back doors preceding each section - is no easy reading, but for those risking entrance, it may well function as an instructive avant-garde poetics." British Journal of Canadian Studies"Kroetsch.has created a small gem of book.. By turns reportage, recapture, rumination, imagination; by turns deeply searching, lightly whimsical, or refreshingly palpable, the two lives--shared and hidden--play out, with the matter of poetry itself seldom absent." Peter Skinner, Foreword Magazine

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Darbasie takes his readers on an intimate journey that encompasses the "landmarks of [his] fascination," (44) namely the fault lines where one reality collides with another, and identities converge. At once colloquial and esoteric, autobiographical and political, the poems are guided by two main metaphors: music and carnival, two of the island's richest traditions. The collection's "playful romp / among Old World, New World roots" (57) is framed by the overarching metaphor of the island, both a geographical place and a microcosm of the world." Stephanie Heidenreich, Prairie Fire Review of Books (see full review at www.prairiefire.mb.ca/reviews/darbasie_n.html)"In its entirety, the collection forms a cultural mosaic taking the reader on a relatively gentle, yet disruptive, post-colonial journey. Separately, each poem stands on its own as an elegantly written snapshot from a single lifetime. The inclusion of actual photos on the back cover complete the autobiographical framework and gives this text a sense of authenticity within a poetic vision that simultaneously threatens and challenges the notion of the authentic at every turn....A Map of the Island stands alone as a beautifully connected mosaic that also exists separately as individual poems laying claim to the experience of youth - both connected and disconnected by geography, material goods, nation, and colonialist disruption." David Bateman, Canadian Ethnic Studies".charming and delightful." Douglas Barbour, The Edmonton Journal"His poems evoke the life, conflicts and memories of the West Indies, told through a prairie perspective, as he struggles to understand the meaning of home." Prairie Books Now"Darbasie's poetry is as rhythmic and musical as the Calypso musicians who provided the background sound for his childhood." Naton Leslie, MultiCultural Review

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Book SynopsisA meditation on the mystery of what happens at the moment it happens.Trade Review"These tiny quatrains are compressed meditations that expand in the mind to reveal glimpse after glimpse of a cosmic vision in which what happens in the world of animals resonates in the human world and in the realm of the divine. They have a kinship with cultural paradigms that reach back to a time before written language. Like the poems of Emily Dickinson and the songs of William Blake, their surprising energy is not the result of simple aggregation, but resides in and releases from the fact that the whole of Blodgett's poetic universe is present in each of its parts." George Amabile"E.D. Blodgett's An Ark of Koans is a series of deeply meditative, zoological-themed quatrains by a typically sublime Edmonton-based, Governor General's Award-winning poet. The perfect chunks of verse in this book are almost holographic in nature, each snippet embodying its own complete poetic universe, plumbing philosophical depths without ever losing sight of everyday vernacular comfort....You can't ask for better bedside reading." Gilbert A. Bouchard, The Edmonton Journal"Energetic, wonderfully presented, and celebrating natural and animal life, these moving verses offer reflections to quietly ponder at leisure." - Wisconsin Bookwatch"Governor-General's-Award winner E.D. Blodgett presents an excellent new volume, An Ark of Koans. Montreal illustrator Jacques Brault (a poet himself) accompanies the poems with a series of whimsical watercolours that recede as watermarks on the page (a curling fish, a slumping frog, and two insects are particularly notable). The book comprises a series of quatrains on animals, all admitted to the ark of a riddling mind, where they are preserved, one would like to think, from a flood of human indifference. This is by no means a book of environmental protest, but a poetry of identification, of imaginative engagement with the creaturely domain, the meditative word that incarnates and preserves....Blodgett's moving poems build a second ark of sorts, minute riddlings in a fallen rational world that bring love and wonderment to the cause." University of Toronto Quarterly, Vo. 74, No. 1, Winter 2004/5" The thematic furniture is outsize-but they are handled so lightly and dreamily that the poems seem like so many snow-globes with their two or three primary elements falling in a soft flurry of words..These paragraphs offer a master-class on the use of repetition, or in other words, on how to walk elegantly in long dress without having to gather up the train of your own utterances and without once tripping. As the last line tells it, these poems turn continually upon themselves, which is what makes them mesmerizing." Jeffery Davidson, Volume 75, Number 1, Winter 2006."The poems in An Ark of Koans can be read simply for the beautiful images of the natural world or, on a deeper level, as a search for universal truths made visible through the natural world. Each four-line poem paints a picture with depth and beauty, quietly conveying far more than a simple description of the creature." Susan McKnight, Candian Book Review Annual, 2004

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Where much of contemporary formally innovative poetry unstructures conventional syntax, these poems seek an ancient, traditional, and highly rhetorical syntax in lengthy compound-complex sentences full of twists and turns of focus and desire..Where much of contemporary formally innovative poetry unstructures conventional syntax, these poems seek an ancient, traditional, and highly rhetorical syntax in lengthy compound-complex sentences full of twists and turns of focus and desire." Douglas Barbour, Canadian Book Review Annual, 2005."I reviewed E.D. Blodgett's An Arc of Koans last year, and have decided that it must speak well of Blodgett's versatility that the poems included in open the grass (both are part of his apostrophes series), are so different in manner. Picture broad, page-wide paragraphs (in a square-format book) threaded with long, sinewy, wistful sentences. The former volume was made up of diminutive riddle poems, evoking impressions more in what they do not say than in what they make explicit. These poems work just as interestingly from the other direction, from the side of prolix extension and operatic accumulation. The thematic furniture is outsize - stars, sky, trees, moon, sea, silence, and of course fields and fields of grass - but they are handled so lightly and dreamily that the poems seem like so many snowglobes with their two or three primary elements falling in a soft flurry of words." Jeffery Donaldson, University of Toronto Quarterly, Vol 75, No.1, Winter 2006

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Book SynopsisA lament in light. A breath-taking memorial. Poetry and photography compose the landscapes of remembrance.Trade Review"[Readers] will find it easy to immerse themselves in the meditation that is Elegy. Nineteen black and white landscape photographs by Yukiko Onley ("portraits of nature," according to Blodgett) further illuminate the poems and ensure the book will remain open in readers' hands long after they have finished reading." Mark Wells, The St. Albert Gazette, August 31, 2005"The resulting book-weaving long poem and photographs-is a beautiful, vibrant exploration of loss and growing understanding...For her part, Onley's photographs often have the diffused haunting qualities of her husband's watercolours." Chris Wiebe, VUE Weekly, October 13-19, 2005"Elegy is a unique collaboration of the poetry of E.D. Blodgett and the black and white photography of Yukiko Onley, to create a wistful remembrance of loss, death, and transition. The gentle, reflective poetry quietly muses about the unknown, while the still images of natural beauty evoke a picturesque mood that complements the verses perfectly. Elegy is not subdivided into separate poems per se; it is rather one long poem of memory, wonder, longing, and healing." The Wisconsin Bookwatch, February, 2006."...Blodgett has crafted Elegy with a compassionate and meditative hand....[T]his is a shared lament, a prayerful journey through loss." Eric Barstad, poetryreviews.ca, February 16, 2006."I am increasingly impressed with how versatile E.D. Blodgett can be. In last year's review I spoke of how different were his 'broad, page-wide paragraphs (in a square-format book) threaded with long, sinewy, wistful sentences' in apostrophes (2004) from the diminutive riddle pieces of 2003. Now we have something in between, not the prolix revolvings of last year's volume or the sly encryptions of the one before. Elegy is the title and subject of this year's crop..I had the sense with this book, as I often do with Blodgett's work, of a raffle-ticket barrel being turned and turned, the same words falling over one another in myriad arrangements.and the poet going in deep each time and coming up with a poem. I found the accompanying photographs quite suggestive, if a little on the sentimental side (nudging this volume in the direction of the coffee-table book), but a nice account of the project's genesis concludes the book." University of Toronto Quarterly, Vol. 76, No. 1, Winter 2007"In Elegy, E.D. Blodgett does not focus on specific landscapes; rather, he draws his inspiration from a more abstract, elemental landscape of rain, sea, rivers, earth and trees. Blodgett's is a landscape of memory and grief, physical surroundings appropriated to make a sense of loss and cling to remembrance." – Laura Knowles, Oxford Brookes University, British Journal of Canadian Studies, 19.2Table of ContentsA Bend in the River to 1700; The Meeting Place 1700 to 1869; The Manitou Stone 1870 to 1891; Newcomers 1892 to 1913; The Emerging City 1914 to 1946; The New City 1947 to 2004; Index.

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Book SynopsisIn the bentleys, Dennis Cooley, with his trademark energy and verve, has recreated the tensions and themes of Sinclair Ross's classic prairie novel As for Me and My House. Celebrating 'love in a dry land,' Cooley, with his deft, playful command of language, and his typographic exuberance, demonstrates his mastery of the long prairie poem. Containing some of the finest writing of his career, the bentleys will take its place with Bloody Jack as a 'beJesus delight.'

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Book SynopsisParis remains one of the most fascinating cities in the world. It provides a measure of excellence in many areas of culture, and it is itself constantly being measured, both by its lovers and by its critics. This book presents a series of studies on the images of Paris presented by writers (mostly Canadian, from John Glassco to Mavis Gallant to Lola Lemire Tostevin), but also in such other areas as social history and personal memoir. The result is a wide-ranging discussion of the city''s history in 20th century literature and thought, which will appeal to all those who love Paris, or who have ever walked on its streets.Trade Review#4 on the Edmonton Journal "Edmonton Top 10" Bestseller list"Stephen Scobie is a prolific poet and literary critic, the author of 23 books, the founding publisher of Longspoon Press, a retired University of Alberta English professor and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In his latest work, Scobie takes the measure of Paris through personal journal entries, poetry, literary theory and criticism as well as through architectural and cultural history. It is the act of moving through the city on foot, however, that ties these disparate approaches together.. The Measure of Paris is also autobiography; it is an expression of personal fascination by a lifelong intellectual. When walking Paris with Scobie, the reader is alternatively dazed by a surfeit of the unfamiliar and exhilarated by the thrill of discovery." Doug Horner, Alberta Views"Measure of Paris by Stephen Scobie is a travelogue, memoir, literary criticism and poetic look at Paris.... Scobie is the ultimate flâneur and his philosophical meanderings through Paris takes readers to sites of art, architecture and transit. His history of the city planning, and the itineraries of Canadian writers in Paris, makes for interesting reading and a different look at a city that is larger than life. His personal musings were my favourite, along with the insights into Haussman¹s influence and transformation of Paris through the large-scale construction of the streets and boulevards that make the Paris we know today." September 26, 2010 [http://www.somisguided.com/weblog/book-review-measure-of-paris-by-stephen-s cobie/"...Scobie weaves together a book that is part straightforward academic criticism, part anecdotal history and part autobiography." Michael Brown, http://www.expressnews.ualberta.ca/en/NewsArticles/2010/08/Authorlooksbackat theEnglishdepartmentsrisetoprominence.aspx#7 on the Edmonton Top 10 Non-Fiction List (Edmonton Journal), Aug 15/10"As Alain De Botton does in The Art of Travel (2002), Scobie offers a personal, evocative meditation on the meaning of place. For him, the place is Paris, a city that has inspired a multitude of literary responses. This one--which is illustrated with romantic, painterly photographs by Eugene Atget (1857-1927)--is especially notable: with a poet's sensibility and eloquence, the author combines literary criticism, cultural history, poetry, and memoir to create a work that is astonishingly fresh and engaging... Most fascinating is Scobie's evocation of the 'ethos of Paris topography' through an architectural and historical tour of the city's streets; and most elegant and moving is his remembrance of his last visit to Paris, when, grieving over the death of his wife, he revives his love for a city that embraces him. A fine example of travel writing. Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers." L. Simon, Choice, December 2010"Scobie's interest has turned to love and part of the intent of The Measure of Paris is to express this love by examining the many ways in which Paris can be "measured": that is, experienced, understood, viewed, appreciated, and fondly collected in memory and art - in short, the way a lover recalls his mistress. Scobie's approach is multidimensional and he appreciates that ultimately Paris is unattainable. To paraphrase the British writer John Berger, Paris is an older woman loved by a young man, and in this case it is Scobie who is the young man. It is also a book about seeing (after all, are not one's feelings about the beloved based on how she appears?) the city through the eyes of past and contemporary writers as well as through the very personal eye/I of Scobie near the end of the book. The book thus is layered, or works like a mosaic with a series of sharp, well-defined but varied tiles, allowing for a complete picture only when the viewer pulls back." Carmelo Militano, Prairie Fire, April 2011 [Full review found at http://ojs.lib.umanitoba.ca/prairie_fire/article/view/137/128]"'We'll always have Paris.' Bogart's immortal farewell in Casablanca could also serve as a fitting conclusion to Stephen Scobie's recent book The Measure of Paris. Here, he explores the iconic city as not only a place but an inexhaustible, mutable idea that shapes and is in turn shaped by those drawn to walk its streets. Paris, Scobie claims, is a city that "never ends.' ... Scobie is clearly a man of keen and dynamic mind. But this book also shows us a man in love-in love with his subject, with literature, and with the personal Parisian experiences he shared with his wife, whose memory and influence are touchingly honoured in the book's later chapters.... What emerges clearly from Scobie's book is that Paris is indeed a city of dreams-a locus of memory, inspiration, and creativity that is continually dreamed into fresh myth and meaning by new visitors who are themselves subtly changed forever. As Scobie says, in an echo of Bogart, 'There are many farewells to Paris, and none of them is ever final.'" Amy Reiswig, The Malahat Review, May 2011 [Full review at http://www.malahatreview.ca/issues/174reviews_reiswig.html]"Stephen Scobie is a well known figure in Canadian literary circles and his book The Measure of Paris is clearly from the hand of a poet and critic. In fact, it sometimes breaks into verse. It is the work of a geographical outsider who has come to know the place deeply over the years, and who is generous with his wide reading and shrewd personal observation." George Fetherling, Diplomat and International Canada, Spring 2011"Bringing all the elements together under one Parisian banner, Scobie shares his enthusiasm and knowledge of this great city by creating a diverse text and organizing it into six parts. Blending historical exploration with memoir, poetry, and assorted 'travel guide bits'..." Linda Alberta, Prarie Books Now"This cover is elegant and understated, as befits the subject matter, yet still rich and eye-catching; indeed, it grabs one immediately, and makes a lasting impression. The tone and content of the photo convey the subject matter perfectly, and the design itself is marked by a well-resolved, elegant integration of type and image. The typeface is strong and appropriate, the subtle graphic element added to the cover enriches it, and the overall composition is beautifully handled." Winner of Book Cover / Jacket Design, 2011 Alberta Book Publishing Awards Jury"Because Scobie knows those literary parts of Paris inside out and generously provides details along the way, he is able to vividly recreate the writers' routes and lives, thus adding his own contribution, indeed, to the literature inspired by the city of his dreams." Christine Lorre-Johnston, Canadian Literature"The book, as the note on the back cover says, is a mixture of history, criticism, poetry, and memoir.... This strange mix of materials is beautifully and intelligently executed.... Scobie's book revealed to me a set of ideas that have been out there for a long time-the connection between walking and creativity, but more important for me, I learned that the practicing street photographer is an art-making flâneur.... Anyone interested in Paris or literature associated with Paris will find The Measure of Paris enjoyable and useful, but for me reading it was the beginning of an ongoing revelation." Larry E. Fink, May 18, 2014 [Full post at http://finkstreetphotography.com/?p=200]

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Book SynopsisListen to the voices of the muses in a Scottish-Canadian daughter's homage to her parents.Trade Review"Ready your Kleenex. Edmonton's former poet laureate, Alice Major, delivers tears in torrents in her homage to her parents and ill sister. Avoiding over-sentimentality, Major relies on history, brutal facts, Greek myth and biblical metaphors in a perfect homage." Telegraph-Journal, February 27, 2010"Alice is a prodigious poet, whose Office Tower Tales (the 2009 winner of the Pat Lowther Memorial Award) rivaled Chaucer's 'frame story' in the Canterbury Tales;.She sustains a classical context in this new collection." Anne Burke, Prairie Review, Spring 2010#7 on the Edmonton Journal 'Edmonton Top 10' bestseller list#3 on the Edmonton Journal "Edmonton Top 10" Bestseller list"Memory's Daughter, by Alice Major, moves beyond the harrowing experience of infirm parents and final illnesses, to a celebration of two remarkable people. Wielding meticulous research and a keen sense of place, Alice Major recreates the industrial world of Clydeside, the wartime Glasgow of her parents' heritage. With glosas, ballads, sonnets, and lullabies, she tells of clocks and photographs, love and politics, of birds and butterflies, factories and alchemy. Memory's Daughter contains some of the finest formal poetry of the past decade, but handled gently, unobtrusively, helping pure memory to glow just as a gas mantle's structure helps the old fashioned gaslight illuminate a cobbled street." Pat Lowther Memorial Prize jurors, April 2011"Elegiac and tender without sentimentality, Major's poems pay homage to her parents, and especially her father, as he dwindled into dementia and eventually death. Although personal, the pieces in Memory's Daughter are made richer by their infusion of myths such as that of Eve & Penelope, as well as through their delving into the early technologies of clocks, ships, gas lights and iron works. Embracing scientific diction, forms like the glosa and the adapted ghazal, refusing to shirk the difficult in either emotion or craft, Major's collection is a consistently strong distilling of the world into poetry's invaluable metals." "A remarkable book in its poetic craftsmanship, Memory's Daughter rewards the reader anew with each reading. Major's moving poetic exploration of family and memory on both emotional and lyrical levels reveal a mature poet taking her craft to a new level into various poetic forms and structures and bringing everything together with an apparent ease that comes only from the most skilful of poets." Winner of the WGA's Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry, 2011 Alberta Literary Awards jury comments."Arranged in six parts, Alice Major's Memory's Daughter enhances the long-poem tradition by adapting biblical and Greco-Roman myth to depict metamorphosis through life's seasons.... The Muse of Poetry, Mnemosyne's daughter, grants Major dominion over microcosm, macrocosm, and time itself, a 'pinprick hole in the sky,' illuminating memory... The fourth suite, 'Time is How,' is a remarkable linguistic tour de force, radiant in self-referential language, exploring signifying limits and polysemous freedoms." Karl Jirgens, Canadian Literature, Winter 2010 [See full review at http://www.canlit.ca/reviews.php?id=15222]"Award-winning Canadian poet, Alice Major, has been recognised for the way in which her writing evokes the universal character and concerns of human nature that connect us with those who came before and those who will come after. Major's latest collection of poems, Memory's Daughter, is no exception. This collection meshes the past with the present, drawing together the sacred and the secular while elevating the daily struggles and tragedies of quotidian experience to mythical heights.... Major's collection remains a lyrical and moving tribute to the power of our stories and memories, which shape us even as we imagine we are shaping them. Sharon Selby, University of Edinburgh, British Journal of Canadian Studies, 24.1

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Book SynopsisSumptuous imagery, commanded by musical lines and understated language, reveals the poet's breathtaking vision.Trade Review"'The best part is the moment (often a long one) before one begins a poem. It is that state that Keats calls "negative capability," and it is a state that simply comes over one and almost dissolves one.' This moment or state leads to a particular sensibility that filters through Blodgett's work. "That the world, no matter how brutal and mindless it is tending to be, is a place of incomparable awe.'" Ariel Gordon, Prairie Books Now, Summer 2011Blodgett's weaving of form and content is rare in contemplative poetics.... Blodgett's rhythms, both formal as in traditional sonnets but also relaxed in their line ends and break-up of rhythm, are delicious to the ear. Such poetry is made to read aloud." BC Bookworld"Each time [the imagery of these interrelated poems is] transformed into an elegantly satisfying visual music that pulls the consciousness of the willing reader into a fresh perception of the connections among mind, language, and the world." Neil Querengesser, Canadian Literatures 214, Autumn 2012

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Book SynopsisAward-winning poet exercises the profound mother-daughter trauma forged in the Demeter-Persephone myth with unapologetic modernity.Trade Review"I warmed up to these characters easily, even Hades, and was soon caught up in the narratives, in their sometimes wicked humour, in their sad and surprising turns. Many poems have a kind of double-edged voluptuousness. Demeter Goes Skydiving handles its old material in a new way, the modern terminology adding zing to the classical allusions." David Zieroth, Governor General's Award winner for The Fly in Autumn"How well this story fits our time, while keeping its numinousness. So many phrases and lines I love and say Amen. 'The Muse is the parts of yourself thrown overboard'-ah yes! Goddess bless McCaslin for this tough, sharp and strong work!" Alicia Ostriker, author of the volcano sequence"What an exhilarating romp through Greek mythology and the modern underworld in language both elegant and original! Demeter Goes Skydiving is a contemporary tour de force taking on disenchantment, the pillage and rape of Gaia, patriarchy and its toxic effects, warmongering, and consumerism. This mini-epic reveals how women are wrenched out of spiritual and physical shape by the demands of the culture and ripped apart like Orpheus. It addresses the commoditization of women (and in a larger sense everyone) in our society and the need for a healthy conversation between the two hemispheres of the brain with a view to wholeness and balance-in short, the oneness of heaven, earth, and underworld. This collection is a dramaturgy like a Greek play, with speaking parts, choruses, and music. Individual poems soar, but it is best appreciated as a whole, a jewel with many facets." James Clarke, poet, memoirist, and retired Justice of the Superior Court of Ontario"'Allergens' was the word that threw me violently into a contemporary voice. I was holding on. And it kept me. Big leaps from poem to poem, covering huge territories. These poems are political and lyrical in a way that feels utterly natural." Kate Braid, poet and memoirist"Demeter Goes Skydiving uses the ancient Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone to reflect the underlying theme of struggles between mother and daughter. McCaslin relates this myth to Homer's Odyssey and describes the story of Demeter and Persephone as an epic for women. Such a myth is rarely seen in modern works, McCaslin says. In this collection, Mother Demeter must negotiate an alien world of health clubs, paparazzi and 'reality' shows that illustrates a mother's unconditional love for her daughter. Her lyrics have been described as hilarious, sad, surprising and profound.... Not only does McCaslin's work provide insight into mother-daughter relationships but, through her use of the underworld as a backdrop in her work, she's able to reference the capitalist, materialistic world we live in today that encourages and enforces perfectionism. McCaslin's work allows readers to realize how much we are caught up in consumer society." Nicole Freeston, Event Magazine, May 27, 2011 [Full article at http://tinyurl.com/3lomyof/]"In this collection, Demeter is trying to restore the daughters of today. She ranges from watching High Noon and Extreme Makeover in her hotel room, to trying to adopt Britney Spears. She goes skydiving (of course) and does lunch at the Savoy Grill. She wanders the globe, ending up in Iraq and at the foot of the Kokanee Glacier in B.C.... In addition to the Demeter series, this collection contains a second section of poems called Old Love, which also include some mythical references, to Gaia, to Sophia, and of course to the many permutations of love. [The] poems themselves are very beautiful and memorable, and I really loved this piece. They also reflect and incorporate classical references, in a different way than the Demeter poems, but still carrying that resonance. I am so glad to have discovered this poet... The Indextrious Reader, [Full post at http://indextrious.blogspot.com/2011/09/demeter-goes-skydiving.html]""McCaslin transplants the ancient Demeter-Persephone myth into 21st-century culture, adding complications of body image, addiction, and consumerism to the mother-daughter separation trauma. The resulting poems are by turns profound, hilarious, and devastating." Prairie Books Now, Summer 2011"The latest collection of poems by Susan McCaslin draws upon many of the themes and motifs that have engaged her for years: love, the North, the generational relations of women, the search for Sophia or wisdom, and mythology in its various iterations. But with "Demeter Goes Skydiving" these themes and motifs achieve a maturity of treatment that marks her as a poet of more than passing interest on the national landscape. She is, with this volume, a poet of consequence, a major poetic voice in the country.. "Demeter Goes Skydiving" is bold stuff for a people desperate for wisdom." Michael W. Higgins, Telegraph Journal, April 7, 2012"In McCaslin's modern version, Demeter's search for her daughter takes her not to the underworld, but to our modern world. It's a world of warped body images, addictions, rampant consumerism, and war." Matthew Claxton, Langley Advance, April 5, 2012 [Full article at http://bit.ly/I99d3m]"It's as if McCaslin has, through the first poems, prepared the reader (and herself) for the second section where the person's experiences can be held in the palm of the goddess Demeter and her daughter. It is as if the mother and daughter in one poem can mirror the goddess and her daughter in another but without this connection being overtly pointed out." Yvonne Blomer, Pacific Rim Review of Books"Demeter Goes Skydiving is the best-produced book of the entries in this award category. The cover and page designs are clean and elegant. The text is well edited and readable. The poems torque a common mythological figure into a smart, well-crafted sequence that thrusts the venerable tradition of the Canadian long poem into the 21st century." Jury comments, Robert Kroetsch Poetry Book Award, WGA"Demeter Goes Skydiving consists of three sections, and the Demeter myth poems, set in a contemporary first-world culture, take up the first half of the book. The critique of contemporary consumerism threads throughout the Demeter/Persephone poems, as is the criticism of war.. In this retelling, gods are as much a product of their culture as contemporary mortals seem to be; indeed, Demeter Goes Skydiving is almost an allegory.. [H]owever one reads Demeter Goes Skydiving, the Demeter poems will leave you wanting more." Jeanetta Calhoun Mish, Oklahoma City University, World Literature Today, July, 2012"[McCaslin] fearlessly takes on our two-bit culture.... The last half of the book unleashes the push and pull of a poet engaged with consequence, and the results gleam with her confidence." Andrew Vaisius, Prairie Fire Review of Books, Vol. 12, No. 3 (2012)"Truly moving work.... [O]ver half this collection explores the Demeter & Persephone myth. The strongest pieces are those in which the author morphs into Demeter, a persona that enables her to express her rage over society's superficiality, a veneer of diet pills, gyms, fashion magazines, reality shows, plastic surgery and other ways of controlling women by weakening their capacity for self love and esteem. The titular poem and others...swell the myth into contemporary prominence in tight stanzas that perfectly convey the tension of quivering 'at the edge of the abyss' without respite from suffering's knowledge apart from a 'brief and heavy catharsis.'" Catherine Owen, The Relentless Adventures of OCD Crow, July 2013 [Full review at http://bit.ly/138mtxN]

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Book SynopsisTwo seasoned poets pulse jazz-like variations back and forth via email, from Alberta to Arizona.Trade Review"Douglas Barbour and Sheila E. Murphy extend their ... refined and joyful collaboration, which begun in November 2000 via email, in Continuations 2. Very evident in this flowing is the sense of delight that each writer must have had in the interchange, which results in a third, distinctive, voice.... Word play is extended over stanzas in a relentless rhythm that captivates and invites a circling back..." Shawna Lemay, Edmonton Journal, April 7, 2012 [Full article at http://bit.ly/HzQUjb]"The lyric voice throughout these tight, six-line stanzas is sustained by a 10-year collaborative process in which the poets have kept their song alive via email, back and forth from Arizona to Alberta." Prairie Books NOW"[Barbour and Murphy] extend their sequence of ongoing collaborations, producing a rare second volume of a contemporary collaboration between two poets.... Part of what makes this ongoing collaboration interesting is in the experience behind both writers, as Douglas Barbour has been publishing trade poetry collections since the early 1970s, and Sheila E. Murphy has been publishing nearly as long as well, and their collaborative efforts would be difficult to compare to much of their already-published individual works, truly creating something that is different in tone, style and voice.. This second volume continues the play of call and response, where Barbour and Murphy meet in the middle." rob mclennan, July 7, 2012 [Full post at bit.ly/N3IHIW]

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Book SynopsisThrough poetry, Jenna Butler pieces together the life of a cherished grandmother lost to Alzheimerâs.Trade Review"[Wells] explores the structure of the prose-poem, and the prairie narrative stretched out as long as a line can follow. Arranged in poem-sections, the poem-fragments hold up as a series of family photographs either blurry or apocryphal, and write the prairie sentence/long line with exquisite grace." rob mclennan's blog, March 19, 2012 [Full posting athttp://bit.ly/FSaEgs]"The poems use a rich, sensual vocabulary of flora & fauna, delineating each separate item of once loved & now lost local life, now retrieved by the poet to make manifest the world the remembered grandmother can no longer say into being.... Wells is a beautifully sad acknowledgement of the losses all must face, made deeply personal & universal through its sharply observed images of a life now gone. It's a fine example of how to take lyric & shake it into something beyond the merely personal." Eclectic Ruckus, March 23, 2012 [Full post at http://bit.ly/IgulkV]"In a fragmented, sensory assemblage, Butler witnesses her grandmother's disappearance into dementia. The loss of language is not tidy. Post-it notes are found in 'arcane places.'... Wells is a beautiful homage to a beloved grandparent, but also a poignant and gently persistent inquiry into peripheral loss. Butler gets at the difficulty of 'seeing our own lives erased' from another's memory, and how that leaves us 'left doubting, in a deep place, the truth of our own existence.'" Shawna Lemay, Edmonton Journal, April 7, 2012 [Full article at http://bit.ly/HzQUjb]Interview with Jenna Butler on CBC"[English-Canadian poet Jenna Butler] speaks on rural life as well as the family life that we all share... Wells is a charming read..." Wisconsin Bookwatch, May 2012"Jenna Butler blurs the boundaries of identity in Wells." Off the Shelf, Geist, Summer 2012"This cover stood out from the others because its design is evocative of a place and feeling and not otherwise illustrative or symbolic." AAUP's Book, Jacket, and Journal Show, Jury Comments, 2013The poems in Wells are all written in the second person, and, by addressing the grandmother who eventually will no longer recognize her, Butler creates not an elegy but an intimate dialogue. She not only speaks to her grandmother but also speaks for her, turning fragments of memory and family lore into a winding narrative of Muriel Butler's life, from childhood to old age. - See more at: http://arcpoetry.ca/?p=6913#sthash.GRZcuKzO.dpuf, Jennifer Delisle, Arc Poetry Magazine, July 25, 2013"[Wells] contains atmospheric and beautiful prose-poems about [poet Jenna Butler's] English grandmother. Those who have been to the area around Wells-next-the-Sea will appreciate how well Butler evokes East Anglia with its coastal lands, where 'the North sea speaks carefully around a mouthful of flints,' and its wide skies over the saltmarshes with birds riding the wind - 'a linnet in aerobatic flight, its song pealing like rain'. But even for those who do not know the locality, Butler's poems will surely conjure them as clearly as she portrays the terrifying swarm of hornets in barley fields that few of us could ever have imagined: 'Nothing saved you from those lividly buzzing fields, not wellingtons to the knee, not the mad frenzied dash affected at each humming cataclysm.'" Michael Bartholomew-Biggs, London Grip [Full review at http://bit.ly/1jhcMB0]"Similarly emphasizing the close connections among place, identity, and loss, Jenna Butler's Wells memorializes a grandmother living with Alzheimer's disease by evoking the sounds,smells, and textures of the English village on the North Sea where she has spent her life... Meticulously crafted, the book consists of eight sections of six poems each in which Butler charts the stages of her grandmother's 'vanish[ing]' and shores up the details of her world in long-lined stanzas of varying lengths.... Butler's emphasis on the persistence of her grandmother's embodied identity here is politically important." -- Sara Jamieson * Canadian Literature *

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Book SynopsisPoet Kimmy Beach has succeeded where every Bond villain has failed: to kill 007.Trade Review"Essentially Beach takes away the main thing that's made Bond films international hits for five decades - the vicarious jolt of escapist adventure they provide for our ho-hum lives. So how does Bond cope with this smothering dose of reality?. Readers will have to peruse The Last Temptation of Bond, an imaginative pastiche of poetry, prose and playwriting, to see whether the one-time spy gets his action-packed life back." Lana Michelin, Red Deer Advocate, March 15, 2013"[Kimmy Beach] has a tremendous skill at drawing readers into whatever world she is creating - we see the characters, we hear them and our senses are starkly aware of their surroundings. Readers truly feel close to what's going on. Honestly, there is little that can compare with her boldness as an author and creativity as an artist. Each word feels like it has been carefully chosen, but at the same time the text clips along with a completely natural feel." Mark Weber, Red Deer Express, April 10, 2013"The poet's fifth collection is an exploration of [James Bond's] essence, the alchemical composition of his fictional (and physical) allure. The Last Temptation of Bond, however, is far more than an erotic exploration of a beloved character; it is also an examination of the limits of that character, the points at which Bond might become fractured and undone. Beach explores Bond at his most vulnerable, at moments of self-doubt, loathing, failure, and fear (the same way Scorsese treats Christ in the film alluded to in the collection's title). Beach is no stranger to exploring seductive pop-culture figures in her poetry.... She handles Bond even more intimately, wriggling her fingers into the fault lines of his psyche and gleefully ripping." Natalie Zina Walschots, Quill & Quire [Full review at http://bit.ly/17ndxbx]#2 on the Calgary Herald's Bestsellers list (Fiction) for the week of June 29, 2013"As a publication within U of A Press's Robert Kroetsch poetry series, the book's freedom of movement among genres and voices honours Kroetsch, who would have appreciated both the elevation and the reduction (but not the demise, Bond is eternal) of the cultural hero. The cover (Roberto Conte's angel) is stunning.... From the start, through highly detailed second-person, as well as third-person prose, Beach pulls her readers into the world of Bond and his women.... The power of this book is its confident enjoyment within fictional and imaginative realities.... The book calculatedly engages its readers on an experiential level and demands readers' responses not only to its content but to the ways the content is delivered. Its light touch is always tongue in cheek..." Cornelia Hoogland, The Coastal Spectator, June 29, 2013 [Full review at http://coastalspectator.ca/]"Red Deer's Kimmy Beach offers her best book yet in The Last Temptation of Bond. In something resembling an experimental thriller/romance novel, Beach's long poem satirizes the pop-culture figure of James Bond.. The Last Temptation of Bond is smarter, funnier, sexier and perhaps even more plausible than any Bond film." Jonathan Ball, Winnipeg Free Press, July 27, 2013 [Full article at http://bit.ly/1btKwg0]Quill & Quire asked readers to submit their favourite Canadian titles of 2013, and while the results featured a breadth of authors and publishers, some clear winners stood out, such as The Last Temptation of Bond! http://bit.ly/1jpH8Xj"In this book of wonderful poetry on all things Bond, Beach invents a few what-if situations and also a very exciting but mysterious woman she calls One." Alex Waterhouse-Hayward, February 18, 2014 [Full post at http://bit.ly/1cdzQOe]"In a penetrating, violent, sexy, and often hilarious apocalypse, a world-famous superspy meets his demise at the hands of an audacious, painstaking poet. Kimmy Beach fuses popular culture and narrative poetry to astonishing effect in this, her fifth book. Feasting on the tropes, traps, and types of the James Bond mythos and doubling back on the incendiary narrative of Nikos Kazantzakis The Last Temptation of Christ, Beach and her cast of loved-and-left Bond Girls dismantle the man and his mysteries. Fans of Beachs tenacious poetry and readers seeking redemption in explosive narrative and fearless wit will love this book." -- Zane Hannan * Facebook *"This is Beach's most mature and sophisticated book yet and one that lends itself to different readings whether as entertainment, a feminist text, or a sophisticated play of intertextuality.... I woke with a smoker's cough and a vicarious hangover after reading these poems." FreeFall, Vol. XXIV, No. 1 -- Bruce Hunter * FreeFall *

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Book SynopsisWith linguistic keenness and rapid-fire shifts, Cooleyâs abecedarium challenges the way we look at language.Trade Review"Writing his way down to basic elements, Cooley writes through the development of language and writing, various ancient histories, books and writers he has read and admired over the years and prairie landscapes, blending them together in an abecedarium that works to explore the very idea of communication: written, spoken and archival. This is Cooley at smart and serious joyful play, pure and simple, bringing the weight of years of reading, listening, research and knowledge to every motion." http://www.robmclennan.blogspot.ca/2014/05/dennis-cooley-abecedarium.html, accessed May 26, 2014# 4 on the Winnipeg Bestsellers list (Paperback Fiction) for the week of June 8, 2014"Winnipeg poet, editor and critic Dennis Cooley’s new poetry collection, abecedarium is an expansive play of puns and train-of-thought sound play constructed through an exploration of a variety of subjects, including the history of the alphabet, references to the works of writers such as Robert Kroetsch, George Bowering and Andrew Suknaski, prairie histories, crows and what the ear hears, and poems that simply appear to propel narratively through and against the sounds of the words themselves.... This is Cooley at smart and serious joyful play, pure and simple, bringing the weight of years of reading, listening, research and knowledge to every motion." -- rob mclennan's"All writers love language--it's a basic job requirement--but few writers adore the alphabet as much as Winnipeg experimental poet Dennis Cooley.... abecedarium is a convincing challenge to the notion that poetry must be 'difficult' or unpleasant to be relevant. Rather, embracing all that is playful and fun about language, Cooley shows that such poetry can be at its most incisive." -- Jay Smith * Alberta Views *"Cooley’s latest collection invites us down to, and then past, the level of alphabet to shred and rebuild meaning from the smallest elements of language. He often does so using humour, sometimes through poetic-historical essays on pivotal moments in the evolution of language and script, and always with a sense of adventure.... In abecedarium, he continues to discuss language in an engaging and exciting way.... He brilliantly conveys and samples these elements—from miniscule, single sounds to sweeping philosophies of language—that together lead to the varied sound and shared meanings that keep language interesting, and that make it work.... To Cooley’s great credit, he adeptly plays to the linguistic elite while still offering something deeply interesting, thought-provoking and even fun to readers less interested in the backstory than the reward." Accessed May 21, 2015 [Full review at http://arcpoetry.ca/?p=8794] -- Anita Dolman * ARC Poetry Magazine *"In recalling its titular genre’s function as exercise book and devotional text, abecedarium at once invokes conceptual writing and remains anchored in the prairie language poetry tradition in which Cooley has been at home for decades." Canadian Literature 226 (Autumn 2015) [Full review at: https://canlit.ca/article/questionable-concepts/] -- Carl Watts * Literature 226 *

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Book SynopsisLacroixâs poems connect readers to the physical and emotional struggles of Chopin, Schumann, and Debussy.Trade ReviewMelissa Morelli Lacroix crafts poems responding to the complex negotiations of love... A Most Beautiful Deception recounts death and suffering woven through with the irreplaceable moments of life and the sweet sting of memories. Reaching to the early nineteenth century, the poems weave lives of artists, mourners, and admirers while modelling the composers' musical scores in form.... Although emphasizing degeneration and death--physical, social, psychological--the poems maintain vibrancy, often crystallizing sound, light, colour, and emotion.... Despite its complexity and range, Deception is remarkably accessible, managing to humanize musical giants and to harmonize life's glory and brutality while avoiding sentimentalism. -- Tina Trigg * Canadian Literature *

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Book SynopsisPoetic exploration of historical records of the Frog Lake Massacre (1885) links past to present.Trade Review"...Zits' book juxtaposes fragments of others' writing to invite readers to ponder the concept of reconstituting history when the low fog of racism attends cultural difference and shrouds events, when personal investments of witnesses to that history are so divergent, and when oral and written versions of events tell incommensurable stories." -- Susan Gingell

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Book SynopsisStephen Scobie reflects on the cinema of Jean-Luc Godard with poems for 44 Godard films.Trade Review"Stephen Scobie's newest collection is a chronological, poetic study of the films of French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard. And like the work of the man about whom Scobie writes, the book is pleasingly esoteric and sharply focused.... this book studies and examines Godard in a sharp and thrilling way, and Scobie invites his reader to further explore the world of the great filmmaker. Scobie's knowledge of Godard is vast, to be sure, but his poetics-and his love for the films-are what truly shine here." Kimmy Beach, ARC Poetry Magazine, February 2014 [full review at http://arcpoetry.ca/?p=7755]“In the poem on one of Godard’s masterpieces, Weekend, Scobie writes: ‘What a rotten film / All we meet are crazy people / eating each other.’ A funny barb, with a hallucinatory development in the image, that works against expectation by insulting Godard’s film, the stanza stands on its own. At the same time, the ‘insult’ contains a quotation from the film, thus replicating Godard's own method of incessant quotation—deepening the poem for those who know the film…. Scobie’s poems intelligently engage Godard’s films.” -- Jonathan Ball * Winnipeg Free Press *"The collection is held together by a dense net of recurring motifs.... At the Limit of Breath is a textual space where Godard's characters, places, images, and actors take on a Pirandellian existence, crossing borders of both poems and movies." -- Chiara Falangola and Michael Meagher * Canadian Literature *

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Book SynopsisE.D. Blodgettâs visceral musings explore the intertwining connection between the human and the natural worlds.Trade Review"How succinctly Blodgett captures the fragility and incompleteness of human perception, and our powerful yearning to exceed these limitations.... With poetry, it's one thing to read the words; that happens quickly. Comprehending them is a slower process. Blodgett's poetry is unique, however--it forces you to read much more slowly the first time through. No doubt it's the even-paced phrasing, the deliberate and sparse language.... Poems to think about and think about again. To read, put down and consider, then read again." -- Jay Smith"Blodgett’s latest book in his Apostrophes series is two books in one. Both are contemplations of wisdom and identity. The first is a book of poetry—words laid down in measure, printed on paper. Its words are made of artful language.... The second book is an energy field, conjured by a reader reading that first book. Its words are not human language but the ghosts of the earth, conjured by human speech.... Blodgett’s consciousness is fluid here. His world moves between book, reader, memory, and earth with the surety of dream.... It is a bold undertaking, this business of bridging a half-century of Canadian poetry. Blodgett does it by making each physical word leave the book of words and enter the mind through the book of energies." [Full review at http://arcpoetry.ca/?p=8188#sthash.NwEPOoUQ.dpuf] -- Harold Rhenisch * Arc Poetry *

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Book SynopsisShakespeare in easy-to-use segments for high school and college students. Now students are able to sample a variety of his plays and come to a more complete understanding. Scenes only require from 2-7 characters and are 15-25 minutes in length, making them ideal for classroom performance or for contests, auditions and acting workshops. Each scene is preceded by a brief description of the characters and a plot synopsis.

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Book SynopsisAn early collection from a widely published poet featuring sometimes ironic poems on subjects ranging from haunted houses to lycanthropy to a tongue-in-cheek poem about editors.

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Book SynopsisThis Series Has Been Discontinued is an early collection from a prolific journalist, historian, biographer, and poet.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"With graciousness and brevity, Eric Linders poems paint images elegant in their tautness and rich in complex observation. Like an unconventional spy he rejects stealth but prefers to lurk openly in order to seize the moment and capture it with his snare of words -- before it escapes and evaporates into the general population never to be seen again. His are poems of remarkable clarity, richness, and a confident wit that is more than content to fly under the radar. -- Bob Staake, best-selling author and New Yorker cover artistI heard a famous poet read at Rosary Hill College in Buffalo, and he related how horrible an ordeal it is to write one of his poems. I believe here the opposite is true in the work of Eric Linder. Congratulations to him for this collection. I have admired his work for years, and it is clear that he enjoyed writing the poems, and the joy of that is many times repeated, manifested in the reading of them. It is something rare for me that I was sorry to see the books end, and peremptorily I can say it. I read a lot of quite wonderful poetry, and this is the best book of poems Ive read in twenty years. -- Michael Casey, author of There It Is: New & Selected Poems and past winner of the Yale Younger Poets prize for his book Obscenities

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Book SynopsisWith Voices of Dogtown, James R. Scrimgeour has written an imaginative insiders guide to New Englands most enigmatic setting. Dogtowns distinctive terrain provides the backstitching to a tapestry that Scrimgeour has woven through with the voices of the area''s doomed souls and the many scholars and artists the land has inspired. The result is a deeply researched and thoroughly imagined collection celebrating Dogtowns unique character and its unshakeable effect upon those who venture to know this mysterious place. Elyssa East, author of Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town. Dogtown was and is uniquely New England. Scrimgeour leads us there down a two-lane roadone lane paved with historical research and the other lane paved with the embodied experience of being in a place, seeing its shadows, hearing its ghosts. The walk is a bit out of the way and perhaps a bit overgrown, and theres a good chance of collecting what Scrimgeour calls the Dogtown bug, but its just that bugthe voices we bring back with usthat we remember long after the end of the trip. Brian Clements, co-editor of Bullets into Bells: Poets and Citizens Respond to Gun Violence. The voices in these poems . . . bring Dogtown alive in a multi- dimensional way that comes as close, in my judgement, as anyone has come so far to capturing the complete essence of Dogtown. When I finish reading these poems, when I have heard all the voices they contain, I think of Dogtown as if it is a sentient, breathing organism, and I marvel at my appreciation and understanding not only of the experience of Dogtown in particular, but also of the experience of place in general. Carl Carlsen, author of Brickyard Stories: a Lynn Neighborhood and Its Traditions

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Book SynopsisParis Paint Box, New and Selected Poems, brings together over forty-five years of poetry by Helena Minton. The book opens with a sequence about the life and work of the French Impressionist painter, Berthe Morisot. Additional new poems focus on everyday moments, and meditations on the past. In selections from her previous work, poems touch on family, gardens, New England history and landscapes, and the Alaska wilderness. In a quiet but determined voice, the poet draws the reader into her world with direct, spare language and a keen eye to detail.

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Book SynopsisIn 1972, Michael Casey won the Yale Younger Poets Prize for Obscenities, a collection of poems drawn from his military experience during the Vietnam War. In his foreword to the book, judge Stanley Kunitz called the work a kind of anti-poetry that befits a kind of war empty of any kind of glory and the first significant book of poems written by an American to spring from the war in Vietnam. Its raw depictions of wars mundanity and obscenity resonated with a broad audience, and Obscenities went into a mass market paperback edition, and was stocked in drugstores as well as bookstores. In the decades since, Caseys poetry has continued to document the places of his work and life. Then and now, his poems foreground the voices around him over that of a single author; they are the words of young American conscripts and their Vietnamese counterparts, co-workers and bosses, neighbours and strangers. His compressed sketches and unadorned monologues have appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, and Rolling Stone. There It Is: New and Selected Poems presents, for the first time, a full tour through Caseys work, from his 1972 debut to 2011s Check Points, together with new and uncollected work from the late 60s on. Here are all the locations of Caseys life and work -- Lowell to Landing Zone, dye house to desk -- and an ensemble cast with a lot to say. The publication of Michael Casey''s New and Selected Poems, with his quirky portraits of ordinary Americans, is an event to celebrate. Like a photographer snapping pictures relentlessly, he must have written a poem about everyone he ever met with dead-on realism. Compared to him, the Spoon River Anthology is a work for kiddies.Trade ReviewI first heard Michael Casey read these poems on a July evening in New Hampshire long ago while the war in Vietnam was still a tremendous confusion and sorrow for all of us and the poems made sense of it in a new way. My writer father had discovered that our summer neighbor was a poet and had invited him to read to us. I was stunned by the power of the language, the great-heartedness of the poems, the way Casey was not afraid to write about how men act under pressure, the way he used ordinary words to describe extraordinary feelings. Now I read the poems in a New York City apartment in a time that seems as confusing as the 1970s. Michael Caseys poems changed as he went back to work after the war and later when he moved north, but their power is undiminished. He is tough but the poems are tender. These are poems that grab you by the heart and refuse to let you go. Read them! Susan Cheever, author of Drinking in America: Our Secret History and E.E. Cummings: A LifeThese are wonderfully droll, deadpan poems, like slyly condensed short stories, with an eye for the tellingly absurd detail and an ear for the oddities of everyday speech. Michael Foley, author of The Age of Absurdity and Isnt This Fun: Investigating the Serious Business of Enjoying Ourselves"If Robert Frost was a poet of the rural New Englander, Michael Casey, also a New Englander, brings to life his mill town background, the guys who didn't go on to college and the larger world, but married the girls they dated in high school and got jobs in the mill. When he's sent to Vietnam he captures his fellow soldiers in their own military jargon. A master of the vernacular, he forces one to question writing in the 'correct' language when so many of us speak it quite differently, the language we think and feel in. Rare among poets, he's willing to explore colloquial speech in all its messiness, and gets it down perfectly -- in fact, he's got us all down spot on. This collection, with its wide range of voices, is a unique achievement. -- Edward Field, author of The Man Who Would Marry Susan Sontag and After the Fall: Poems Old and New

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