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Thanksgiving: Summers we'd give thanks to be city born and bred when, come mid-August, our country cousins trudged two weeks ahead to the stern task of learning, the clean-cut drudgery of school. Of course, in October we'd curse the luck that gave them a fortnight repeal of break-knuckle rules - though what could be worse than digging potatoes in muck-caked fields? Who, in their right minds, would envy that chore, and pray - in late November, a thousand miles and many years away - to restore themselves by the grace of clay-coated hands? Elbow-deep in a sack of unscrubbed spuds, we swear never to wash off that red mud. Home resonates in this collection. Heart longs for the Prince Edward Island birthplace left behind, memory building like early frost on fresh laundry. But there is another sense of home for this poet of the Irish diaspora, deep down in legacies of poetry and family lore, bred-in-the-bone, read in the signs of sea and sky. For O'Grady, the poet is charged with turning and returning to such legacies of place and time - with celebrating what really matters.Throughout this dynamic collection, powered by an imagination that gains momentum like a bicycle running downhill, and pressured by exquisitely turned phrase and rhyme, O'Grady maintains an exhilarating grip on language and landscape, on the wondrous details of poetry, place, and home. ... Read more

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A Fine First Book of Poetry
Thomas O'Grady's first collection of poems will not disappoint those whohave followed his appearances in periodicals.The poems deal in a profoundway with real questions, of which the most dominant is the theme of exilefrom the poet's native Prince Edward Island.There will no doubt beconsiderable resentment on the part of programmatic readers who hate eitherthe subject matter of family life or the skilled use of fixed forms. Others will find little to object to.The workmanship is fine and thelearning vast.O'Grady captures the speech patterns of the Irish diasporafar more accurately and artfully than the bogus and infinitely popularFrank McCourt.The book satisfies the reader in itself and promises otherwonderful collections in the future. ... Read more

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They become strange, forget/the ties that bound them to/a familiar world, forget their/underwear, their brassieres, their/bodies/demanding comfort now, after the/fierce holding of appearances, family,/all the animate world, on course:/pilots who must navigate over/mountain ridges, vast oceans./At last they furl their sails, /undo the lines. Their bodies /lose shape, their skin shrivels, they moor themselves to the walls /of small rooms, appear to sleep. /Sometimes in the dark, their bodies shiver, the slight motion /of a chrysalis in winter. ... Read more

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The poems in "The Silver Palace Restaurant" roam from the Rocky Mountains and the Gaspe Peninsula to Italy, Croatia, and China. At ease with both traditional and post-modern forms, Mark Abley touches on intimacy, parenthood, and death, mountain-climbing, hiking, and birding. Abley's first collection of poetry in eleven years reveals the keen sensitivity to the nuances of language to be expected from the author of the internationally acclaimed "Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages". He cares deeply about language and "The Silver Palace Restaurant" is infused with a sharp intelligence and emotion. ... Read more

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Reservoir Haiku bent by refraction dead birch sink between rushes last winter's goal posts the motion of skates still in the green dregs after a summer of drought. From childhood scenes in Deep Creek to the restless migrations across Canada, "A Dream of Sulphur" explores the relationship between memory, language, and geography. As a grandmother battles memory loss, a Hungarian is exiled to Canada, the Tofino fishing industry collapses, or August fire in the Shuswap prompts the largest evacuation in B.C. history, the crucible image of a Libby's bean can captures the central theme of flux and the inevitable recasting of home. Aurian Haller was born and raised in the Shuswap region of British Columbia. He has worked as a bush cook, carpenter's assistant, and piano teacher, and is presently doing doctoral research on working-class art movements of the West Coast at Simon Fraser University. ... Read more

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This text presents a second collection of verse from poet Jeffery Donaldson, based around the imagined possibility of "Waterglass." It features the poem "Above the River." ... Read more

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Andrew Steinmetz's second collection of poetry turns a clinical eye on his favourite subjects - love, marriage, power, fantasy, and art. At the crossroads of the credos "know thyself" and "heal thyself," Steinmetz adopts a "hurt thyself" attitude that is sardonic and compassionate. Using a tersely sensitive language that relies on the poet's own speaking voice, Hurt Thyself betrays a slightly ominous and skewed philosophical rigor. The implications of the poet's examined life are poems that feel emotionally exposed yet discriminating and sceptical. ... Read more

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What Do You Call This? My grandfather kept his in his pocket, taking it out only at dinner. I own one too. More emblem than tool really, but I love the way it answers my grip, perfectly weighted, light, the small crook of its handle hugging my pinky, the blade curved like the C of my own name, so that whatever I need to cut, I need to cut towards me, my thumb steadying the object, then a surgical half-sweep my grandfather used to shear away a bit of cheese, a chunk of bread, or to divvy up a peach, piling the pieces in his glass of red wine. And me, what do I use it for? To sharpen my pencil. Its crescent tooth bites into the wood, moving oh so quick and deep, this doohicky sickle, this whatsit scythe. Rongetta. Ron-get-ta. The elegance, verbal felicitousness, and subtle crafting that were the signature qualities of Carmine Starnino's debut, "The New World", are once again on display in his second book, "Credo". Whether the subject is a passport, a clothesline, an antique goblet, prayer, or archaic English words, Starnino exercises an arresting mixture of wit and wordplay that rejoices in its own resources, its own cadence and diction."Credo" places Starnino in the forefront of a new generation of Canadian poets. Carmine Starnino is a poet living in Montreal. His first book of poetry, "The New World", was shortlisted for the 1997 A.M Klein Prize, the 1998 Gerald Lampert Memorial Prize, and given honourable mention in Quill and Quire's Best Books of 1997. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

the credo, great stuff
The credo, which was written by my cousin carmine is good stuff... if yur the kind of person who likes to read good stuff.

Have a good time,

Unimaginative Formalism
This second book by up-and-coming Canadian poet, Carmine Starnino suffers from terminal pretentiousness, limp conservatism and an unforgivable bout of bad ear. I saw Starnino read from his first book in Ottawa a few years ago, and was pleasantly struck by the sincerity and youthful energy in his albeit turgid poetry. At that point, I was hoping this young poet would be able to emerge from the overbearing weight of his obvious influences: David Solway and Eric Ormsby (two writers also based in Montreal), and find his own voice. Unfortunately, what we get here, is more simplistic, untruthful, poems about the writer's Italian origins, and heavy-handed formal poems that, while showing a keen interest in word-play, utimately come off as derivative, preachy, and well... boring. In "Credo" what we end up with is a young writer who is striving to write like a "master", sounding old and tired beyond his years. Let's hope that Starnino can rediscover some the vigour that I witnessed at his reading in Ottawa, and come up with something more imaginative and fresh than what is presented in this quite disposable collection. ... Read more

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A wonderful portrait of the Canadian landscape
Originally published in 1967 to celebrate the Centennial Year and Expo, this 1983 3rd edition is the latest.

This book divides up pictures of Canada into five regional chapters:

The Maritimes;
Into Quebec;
Ontario;
The Prairies;
British Columbia.

At first sight the book is a picture book with text pages limited to 10%. However the text pages and the captions to the pictures are so well written that they make the book a lasting treasure. Geographic and historic facts are beautifully mixed with descriptive images and phrases of poetic grace in brief but powerful captions to photographs that are so vast they often require more than one page.

Here is a caption for a picture of the Canadian Rockies:

The prairie begins its transformation into foothill and then to mountain once you have passed the 110th meridian of longitude. Farther south, in Colorado, the moment arrives some eight meridians of longitude farther east, the Canadian prairie being wider than the American because the Rockies swerve easterly south of the border. After the swells of the foothills come the waves of the rockies, grey, minaretted, the earth in tempest all the way to the Pacific. Yet, in the troughs of these waves are the absolute stillness of the valleys and the perfect reflection of the mighty rocks in placid, glacier-fed lakes.

What is lacking from the book are the people of Canada. Most of the pictures are landscapes with a few architectural photos added. Where there are people in the pictures they arepart of the background. The only portrait is one of the author at the end of the book. ... Read more

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What a book
The book was actually one of Hugh Maclennan's best. The beginning is just amazing that I just couldn't put the book down. There were many climax in the book and there wasn't really one that I can point out that wasoutstanding. The end was even more amazing. So go buy and read it andenjoy. ... Read more