Description
Book SynopsisShortlisted, Nelson Ball Prize
Longlisted, Raymond Souster Award
Long-Shortlisted, ReLit Award (Poetry)
Daring in form and unflinching in its gaze, Daniel Scott Tysdal’s latest poetry collection examines madness as lived experience and artistic method. Taking inspiration from Al Jaffee’s illustrated fold-ins in MAD magazine, Tysdal explores living with mental illness through a new kind of poetry: the fold-in poem.
In this innovative collection, each poem does not end at the bottom of the page; instead, the reader is invited to complete the poem by folding the page to reveal the final line. From the effects of being “smiled into an elephantine line” at Pearson International Airport to the rites of official memory and forgetting at a baseball game in the aftermath of tragedy, Tysdal probes both his own psyche and the myriad environments that work to enfold those who are deemed mad.
Trade Review“Daniel Scott Tysdal has done what I would have thought impossible: he’s written beautiful, musical, language-y — maddeningly to die for — poems about a life haunted by constant thoughts of killing yourself. Far from being a downer,
The End Is in the Middle is playful and exuberant, a testament to poetry and art pro viding sustenance when all else seems hopeless. In Tysdal’s hands, poetry is indispensably alive and in the middle of everything.” -- Sylvia Legris, author of
Garden Physic“Like the finest origami, Daniel Scott Tysdal’s
The End Is in the Middle crimps and pleats new worlds into life. Each piece invites us to climb mountains and ford valleys along the way, rewarding us with “the possible infinity of enclosures opening on their only impossible escape.” New textures and relations unfold between each crease, producing a work that is masterful, unruly, haptic, and gorgeous.” -- Adrian De Leon, author of
barangay: an offshore poem“
The End Is in the Middle does the serious, revolutionary, and indeed playful work of poetry. It uses the irreverent and legendary
MAD magazine fold-in form to subvert the effects and residues of mental illness in deftly crafted and incisive poems. These unique poems function on multiple levels: puzzle, physical object, art, testimony, and, snake-folded upon themselves, a map to what else could be true. Their speaker searches insistently: How might we “gather while hunted?” Warring for peace, raging against oblivion, fighting for love? And what else is humanity, if not these?” -- Tolu Oloruntoba, author of
Each One a Furnace“At the corner drugstore, each new issue of
MAD would come out, the last page already folded numerous times by those who got there before me (buying the fresh unfolded copy). Daniel Scott Tysdal is that rarest of birds, he is nothing but heart. This rugged terrain could readily crush most, those who lack the gravitas, good meds, or a decent pair of sneaks. Only a playful lover, a jester, The Fool themself could wield such rococo tactical hullabaloo. In flares. I dare you not to fold every fucking page of this book. Go on. I dare you. I’m simply mad about the boy.” -- KIRBY, author of
Poetry Is Queer“Tysdal creates and inhabits a space where
Mad magazine and madness rub against one another, where his students and Eurydice, John Clare and B-movie monsters and filmmakers belong to the same web of connection and where poetry is survival.” -- Melanie Brannagan Frederiksen *
Winnipeg Free Press *
