Redirection: The Prime Sonnets and Other Poems

ISBN-13: 9781927725207 / Angielski / Miękka / 2015 / 124 str.

Brian T. W. Way

Opis

From its quirky sonnets on each of Canadas Prime Ministers to its ruminations on the history and landscape that have helped mould this country, Ways redirection is solidly a Canadian book. The poems are a tour-de-force that shifts in genre, tone, style and theme. Modernist interests are fused with postmodern sensibilities-anything goes as the poems slide from topic to topic, form to form. A charming "ode of sorts" on Al Purdy gives way to a sustained ode on the death of the authors great uncle in World War I, a satire about the odd compulsion of neighbours to decorate their driveways sits next to a comic haiku eulogy about an exotic pet owner who loved baby tigers, an elegy on his mothers death by cancer is followed by an ironic lyric recounting a childs doomed visit to see Queen Elizabeth-the language of Ways work is always precise and unswerving-agile, exact, arcane, blunt. This is a poetry in which imagination, translated into language as effectively as words can manage, offers us a new, often redirected view of the world as Way sees it-sometimes funny, sometimes brutal, but always honest, genuine. And always with that ineffable sense that this is a Canadian seeing himself and Canada inside and out, and the world beyond.From its innovative sonnet sequence on Canadas Prime Ministers to myriad ruminations on matters local and intimate, national and universal, Ways redirection is a Canadian book of poetry that seeks, unceasingly, to lay bare the Canadian psyche and that of the world beyond.