Strike/SlipIn this extraordinary collection from one of our most celebrated poets, Don McKay walks the strike-slip fault between poetry and landscape, sticks its strange nose into the cold silence of geologic time, meditates on marble, quartz and gneiss, and attends to the songs of ravens and thrushes and to the clamour of the industrialized bush. Behind these poems lies the urge to engage the tectonics of planetary dwelling with the rickety contraption of language, and to register the stress, sheer and strain — but also the astonishment — engendered by that necessary failure. |
Contents
Astonished 3 | 3 |
Song of the Saxifrage to the Rock | 10 |
Waiting for Shay | 19 |
Copyright | |
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accumulated alder ancestors anonymous Aornis ASCENT WITH THRUSHES basalt blue hole booming ground build a head Campbell River canoe Chainsaw chunks of granite click click coarse death DEEP MIDWINTER Dick and Pete DIPPER AT PARKINSON DON MCKAY drag empty everything derives fall fingers floated forest forget love Full Moon Gaspereau Ghandl Globe and Mail Griffin Poetry Prize haul haunch heart house wren infinity Ink Lake Jack and Bill layers listen living load Look Loss Creek Mac and Red marble neolithic nuthatch pain finds words PARKINSON CREEK pause peanut perched Philosopher's Stone PINE SISKINS poems poet Pond raven Robert Bringhurst rock room is fleuve San Andreas Fault schist scrawl sediment shear side Sitka spruce slabs snow on snow soft song STRAIN THEORIES stress Strike/slip surface THEORIES OF FAILURE thing utter Vancouver Varves VESPERS Waiting for Shay watch whoa wind wings Xanthoria Yves