In Incitements (Gaspereau Press, 2011.), Sean Howard uses a cut-up method, making poems from three prose texts, demonstrating that it is not the source material or the process but the writer’s hand that creates the end result. Although the subjects of each base text are different, the effects of Howard’s poems are similar. The text […]
Author Archives: Pearl
Review: The Other Side of Ourselves
In The Other Side of Ourselves (Cormorant Books, 2011) Rob Taylor looks at the material of everyday life—scrubbing a pot, a wet cat shaking in the house, lying in bed awake, remembering learning to shave, doing the ironing—and fishes beneath that material for take-aways. The book, heading into its second printing, would seem to have […]
95 Books in 2013, Part 13, 126-131 During, Gusts, The Hollow, Reluctant Gravities
During by Karen Houle (Gaspereau, 2008). I’ve been reading this for 3 months. With 2 tosses across the room in aggravation and subsequent rants, and a few decisions that I’ll never finish it. And yet something about the text made me continue. Some lines sing, and there’s a sense of something urgent and necessary being […]
Formalism, Tours, Awards and Thinking Poetics
Micheline Maylor at Canadian Poetries says this better than it is usually said: it is a shame that New Formalism was thought of as a movement rather than a requirement of the skill set of a poet. Poetry is an interesting thing because it has to do with emotions. People feel something and then assume […]
Factory Series: Nguyen, Smith and Rowley
Books for sale on a Saturday night including Wave books by Hoa Nguyen and 3 of the recent titles by Mari-Lou Rowley. Dale Smith started off the night with pieces from his Slow Poetry in America. “Like many of my generation, thought races to catch up with enthusiasm; emotional awareness, in a crisis unfolding.” And […]