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Last Updated: Feb 20th, 2010 - 16:05:54 |
Reviews
Road show
The grounding of these poems in the personal is not a sentimental act, however. Queyras moves the reader through a relentless enumeration of our downfall—our isolation from one another as we constantly move from place to place, the decay of the infrastructure and the damage it’s done to the planet at large and asks circular questions about our culpability and chances of redemption.
Jan 23, 2010, 20:32
Reviews
Pause for Breath,
Many of these 52 poems are solid, insightful, and tightly written, and a few feature eye-widening turns of phrase. But all are safe. These are the poetic equivalent of curling up on the couch with a blanket and a cup of hot tea on a winter day.
Jan 14, 2010, 16:25
Reviews
Raucous Music
The Pangborn Defence contains many more voices, threads, insights, and moods than this review can describe. It is a rich collection by a poet of range and intellect who has a large body of work going back many years. It surprises by moving suddenly from small scene to broad landscape and back again, sometimes within a line or two.
Jan 14, 2010, 16:03
Reviews
Another Family Album
Morrissey is a romantic poet. “Poetry is the voice of the psyche speaking through the poet,” he has said. One hears Keats and Coleridge in such a contention, but also Jung and other depth psychologists who prefer to speak about the collective unconscious rather than the more personal subconscious theorized by Freud
Jan 14, 2010, 15:58
Reviews
Sinéad Morrissey: Writers Read at Concordia
She began by describing two poles of poetic sensibilities—one including the poet who receives inspiration, as it were, directly from another source and almost acts as a vehicle for transmission, and the other including the poet who shapes and crafts the poem carefully and skilfully, using conceits such as internal rhyme, character portrayal and word play.
Sep 20, 2009, 12:19
Reviews
Michael Towe: A Chaos of Beauty and a Beauty of Chaos: Photographs
Michael Towe sees an urban landscape. By this, I mean geometry: angular, triangular, rectangular—urban constructs and deconstructs. He sees urban colours: rain-washed neons, rusts, peels, graffiti, urban reflection; physical that becomes poetic and philosophical in the broken mirroring windows and stagnant pools around a construction sight. He sees urban nature: tangle of leaves and wires, both essential and both symbols of urban life.
Sep 19, 2009, 11:17
Reviews
Tom Konyves: VIDEOPQ
The premise is not high-concept: poet sits and reads a poem. Should we expect more? Bending the limits of poetic expression, the (relatively) recent phenomenon of the spoken-word revolution (and they were wise to label the expression other than poetry) insists on “appearing before an audience as a performer of word artistry” (quotes mine) in that the text is memorized and delivered in a deliberate and cadenced style.
Sep 16, 2009, 22:12
Reviews
Jennifer Boire: This Way Out:
To devote nine sonnets to watching paint dry, laundry flapping and the shopping itinerary makes me wonder where the dark angel is, the duende – that mysterious power that writes in blood, and grabs the reader by the balls.
Sep 15, 2009, 11:15
Reviews
Buñuel’s Exterminating Angel
The influence of surrealism in The Angel may be seen in the way that reality is made to dissolve into the supernatural. Buñuel wants to push our conventional “rational” world over the brink, into mystery, “the marvelous world of the unknown.” He says he has no desire to preach; he simply wants to open up the unconscious.
Jun 24, 2009, 12:01
Reviews
The Search for Reality: J.W. Morrice
Morrice had every reason to be happy: lots of money, time to travel, in France, on the Riviera, in North Africa, in the West Indies; a charming mistress; music, friends, absinthe, and a spacious artist’s studio in Paris. (His father was a wealthy textile manufacturer in Montreal.)
Jun 24, 2009, 12:01
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