The much-loved, yet undervalued, final book of poems by British-Canadian poet John Thompson, is reissued in a handsome edition, featuring a new introduction by Rob Winger. Originally published in 1978, Stilt Jack is a series of powerful soliloquies on the complexity of love and the process of living. These are made immediate through Thompson’s command of metaphor, his eye for the New Brunswick landscape, his intense, often elliptical way of transfiguring everyday things into shorthand symbols of reality. This remarkable sequence of poems is based on the ghazal, an ancient Persian poetic form which is discussed in Thompson’s introduction to the original edition of the book. These poems more than fulfill the promise of Thompson’s first collection, At the Edge of the Chopping There Are No Secrets. Stilt Jack is the last testament of a major poet at the pinnacle of his craft.
The fundamental difference between rhetoric and poetry, according to Yeats, is that rhetoric is the expression of ones quarrels with others while poetry is the expression of ones quarrel with oneself. Through exquisite attention to outer and inner forms, Vendler explores the most inventive reaches of the poets mind.
'On Form' assesses both the legacy of Victorian aestheticism and the nature of the literary. It tracks the development of the world 'form' since the Romantics and offers readings of, among others, Tennyson, Yeats and Plath. Original readings of poetry are combined with a powerful argument about the nature of aesthetic pleasure.
By turns celebratory and sceptical, Career Limiting Moves is a selection of essays and reviews drawn from a decade of immersion in Canadian poetry. Inhabiting a milieu in which unfriendly remarks are typically spoken sotto voce—if at all—Wells has consistently said what he thinks aloud. The pieces in this collection comprise revisionist assessments of some big names in Canadian Poetry (Margaret Atwood, Lorna Crozier, Don McKay and Patrick Lane, among others); satirical ripostes parrying others' critical views (Andre Alexis, Erin Moure, Jan Zwicky); substantial appraisals of underrated or near-forgotten poets (Charles Bruce, Kenneth Leslie, Peter Sanger, John Smith, Peter Trower, Peter Van Toorn); assessments of promising debuts (Suzanne Buffam, Pino Coluccio, Thomas Heise, Peter Norman) and much else besides—including a few surprises for anyone who thinks they have Wells's taste figured out. Zachariah Wells is the editor of Jailbreaks: 99 Canadian Sonnets and the author of two collections of poetry.
In 1967, then-unknown writers David Godfrey and Dennis Lee founded a small press they grandly named “The House of Anansi,” after an African trickster spider-god. Their goal was to publish groundbreaking new Canadian work in three core genres: literary fiction, poetry, and topical nonfiction. Forty years later, Anansi is not only going strong but enjoying a fascinating creative renaissance, bolstered by both its important backlist and its renewed commitment to seeking out the best new writers and ideas to publish alongside its established ones. Assembled by award-winning writer Lynn Coady, The Anansi Reader features excerpts from ten of the best books from each decade of the existence of the press, for a total of 40 entries. Samples from Lynn Crosbie's Queen Rat, Northrop Frye's The Educated Imagination, and Kevin Connelly's Drift are among the treasures included. In a thoughtful coda, Coady shows readers the future with selections from seven exciting works-in-progress coming from Anansi in the next two years.
"I’d like to think that I’m polarizing the way a battery is," explains Michael Lista in his introduction to Strike Anywhere, "energizing the flashlight by which you read in the dark only because it has a negative and a positive side. Collected here, under one cover, are my cathodes and my anodes." In his self-described ‘arsons’, Lista assesses with equal fire our literary darlings (Anne Carson, Don McKay), talented veterans (Steven Heighton, David McGimpsey) and promising newcomers (Stevie Howell, Aisha Sasha John) of the poetic genre. He depicts a literary institution pathologically averse to the sustenance of a traditional repertoire and addicted to the empty calories of poetic experiments. Television, too, falls prey to his jaundiced eye, from the militant sincerity of The Bachelorette to the receptacle of American anxieties that is The Walking Dead. But beyond passing judgment on the contemporary Literary Industrial Complex, Strike Anywhere acknowledges the inherent contradiction of poetic expression—that its power lies in its uselessness—and recognizes that poets are, nonetheless, the happy few, the unacknowledged legislators of the world. With thoughtfulness, wit and considerable humor, Michael Lista offers a refreshingly candid take on the moral and aesthetic implications of storytelling in all its forms, from boob-tube blockbusters to the latest volume of verse.
The fifty essays in Second Words span the period from 1962 to 1980 and reveal Margaret Atwood's views on feminism, Canadian literature, the creative process, nationalism, sexism, as well as critical commentary on such writers as Erica Jong, E. L. Doctorow, Northrop Frye, Roch Carrier, Marie-Claire Blais, Marge Piercy, Adrienne Rich, Sylvia Plath, and many more.
A COMPANION TO POETIC GENRE A COMPANION TO POETIC GENRE This eagerly awaited Companion features over 40 contributions from leading academics around the world, and offers critical overviews of numerous poetic genres. Covering a range of cultural traditions from Britain, Ireland, North America, Japan and the Caribbean, among others, this valuable collection considers ancient genres such as the elegy, the ode, the ghazal, and the ballad, before moving on to Medieval and Renaissance genres originally invented or codified by the Troubadours or poets who followed in their wake. The book also approaches genres driven by theme, such as the calypso and found poetry. Each chapter begins by defining the genre in its initial stages, charting historical developments and finally assessing its latest mutations, be they structural, thematic, parodic, assimilative, or subversive.
I've lived the way a field is sometimes / a shelter for mice / or sometimes a source of game / for a hawk Inspired by the literary landscape of the late poet John Thompson, Kevin Irie's The Tantramar Re-Vision presents a portrait of nature where the benign and the bedevilled coexist, collude, or collide. The Tantramar Re-Vision charts routes of discovery as it follows trails, waterways, flights, and fears, be it through the woods, the wilds, the page, or the mind where "it's hard to admit / you are not to your taste." It questions an existence in which the inhuman thrives, ignorant of divinity, while the human psyche continues to search for answers as "life takes directions / away from" it. The Tantramar Marsh setting of John Thompson's Stilt Jack resonates with Irie's landscapes of birds, fish, plants, and wildlife, all still within reach yet part of a world where "wind carries sounds / it cannot hear." Insightful and meditative, The Tantramar Re-Vision is poetry of the inner self and the outside observer, a poetic testament to the ways literature creates its own landmarks and nature survives without knowing a word.
There arent too many humans who go through their daily lives aware that there are two worlds here, the human existence and the Demons. Demon are everywhere, some even live amongst humans. There are only two species that are made, Vampire and Lamiahaem, the others, Jorgenhan, Changelings, Sirens, Casanovas, Witches and Warlocks are born or hatched, and they have normal life cycles. Magic plays a big part in our world, there are many humans who find that they can make things happen without being able to explain these happenings, the ones that are strong are generally found and recruited into our world, by the Guard. We had visited with many of these Witches and Warlocks. One family in particular always stood out, the Howard family. Their magic was powerful; nothing had ever measured up to them in all of my years. The matriarch of the family, decided not to join us, she stayed in the human world. Her granddaughters though we would watch from a distance. The Guard are soldiers for the Elders. There are seven Elders, in each sector, and there are three sectors, that keep the world covered. The reason there are seven is to ensure that all main Demons are represented. It is very rare that they ever get together, it has only happened once in my lifetime and that was in the very beginning when they first came to be. The Elders are our law; they are the ones who stop all unnecessary murders/slaughter being done to humans by our kind. They keep harmony. There is only one punishment, imprisonment followed by death. In our sector the lead Elder is my maker, my father, Elder Thomas Carter, he is a Lamiahaem. Lamiahaem are very passionate Demons, if we were not part of the Guard we would be living peacefully in our large family groups. Our species are not naturally aggressive, we have had to learn to adapt to a violent world. We are made and we make our partners, these are always humans that have magical gifts. When we meet that partner it is for life, this is natural for us. It is hard to explain the magnetic pull that you have when you first meet your mate; this love is also experienced by the human. There is only one mate for you, if that is denied you will recover and eventually meet another, but it can take some time. I have been Lamiahaem since 1554, my name is Simon. My father Thomas Carter lost his mate in a fight with vampire before he made me. He still cannot explain why he felt the need to change me, only to say that he noticed my gift of being able to feel illness and injuries and to know how to heal. Father believed that I would be useful to his world. We were in Newcastle in 1635, I was with the Guard. There were Renegade Vampire feeding off humans that had the plague, it appeared their affected blood was something like a drug to them. Even though these humans were going to die, we were still there to stop them from being slaughtered. That was when I seen the woman who would later become my wife, Julie, she had shoulder length light brown hair and sad brown eyes, the feelings I had were instant. Her eyes haunted me every second from the moment I seen her. It wasnt just sexual desire it was a desire to look after her, to be there for her, to never leave her. There were obstacles that I had to overcome, but in 1637, I made her my wife. After she was changed we discovered that Julie could sense feelings. My life now had purpose, she was everything, and she felt the same for me. Together we worked at healing both Demons and Humans. Normally that is where it would stop, we change our mate, but Julie and I were different. In 1665, the plague had hit London. The Vampire returned and so did the Guard. Julie had noticed a young man who was angry, lonely and deeply upset with himself. His family became ill with the plague, Julie and I nursed them until their eventual deaths. The young man, Jonathon became more emotional and was on a path of self destruction, he had an ability that he
