The Stones
Dennis Cooley
Turnstone Press
SC, 132 pp, $17.00
Cooley, an acquaintance, a literary friend, company on my/our ad/ventures passing through school, the Manitoba Writers Guild. My conflict of interest declared, read the death of Lorca pages bottom of 20 to almost bottom of 23. Having run out of Canada, Cooley runs into Scotland, Spain, Europe, the old country, old stones, long enough for a long poem. Stones, I think of Linus throwing stones to vent his anger, sometimes just a flip of the thumb, sometimes a dark heave. So much for that.
Where Calling Birds Gather
John Weier
Turnstones Press
SC 134 pp, $17.00
I read John’s Where Calling Birds Gather manuscript closely as he read my manuscript of boy. My editor happy and in a hurry was satisfied, Weier’s name in my acknowledgements , my name in his, but Cooley had another go. There are no degrees of separation in Canadian poetry, except below zero. John has a poem called “Stone-broke” (p114-115). I asked him for a poem for Rhubarb’s “Power & Politics issue, just launched. No he said., he hadn’t anyway. We both forgot. But there it is called “compass” (109-110). John travels.
The Invisible Library
Paul Wilson
Hagios Press
SC 86 pp $18.95
So my publisher publishes a book he has written himself about books that don’t exist arcana this reading. The problem of the word “poem” the problem of the poem “The Reader (p64), followed by “The Book of Improbable Birds” (no degrees etc.) Szumigalski told me not to write poems about poetry, knowing this is impossible, a rule she broke herself. Still, Paul’s poem for Gary Hyland does not survives this rule. Caroline Heath (my first booklength editor) Anne Szumigalski, Jerry Rush gone, Gary Hyland gone. Their visibility in their books, remains. Of these, I like Doctrine of Signatures, the best, oh how I love “Jazzing at the Vatican,” having heard it live from the grand dame herself. I don’t need Youtube for this memory. I digress. A toast, to Saskatchewan poets, dead or alive!