Description
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 *
