Don McKayReseñas

Hardly a point in the book I couldn't grapple with. That is to say I think I got it, which is to say it is written clearly, with conveyance in mind. There's new zest in metaphor for me, a device I had been thinking was old and easy, not of concern to the new poetry. I like what McKay has to say about it, and I'll feel less guilty using it myself. Still, the practice examples (poems) to the theory often were conspicuous, i.e, a huge gap was present to what I felt the theory was intending and what the poems accomplished, but that's a classic divide. The Bushtits' Nest was the most rewarding part for me. Thank you.

[b:Strike/Slip|1292976|Strike/Slip|Don Mckay|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320506143s/1292976.jpg|1282073] by Don McKay, of Newfoundland, combines living creatures, geology and industry into lovely poems that somehow make the ugly beautiful and bring the natural world--whether pristine or deeply damaged--to life. I loved it, and can tell already that this is a book and a poet I will come back to many times. It won the 2007 Griffin Prize in Canada, and deservedly so, though truth be told I haven't yet read a Griffin winner I haven't loved.

Eventually water,
having been possessed by every verb--
been rush been drip been
geyser eddy fountain rapid drunk
evaporated frozen pissed
transpired--will fall
into itself and sit.

...Suppose Narcissus
were to find a nice brown pond
to gaze in: would the course of self-love
run so smooth with that exquisite face
rendered in bruin undertone,
shaken, and floated in the murk
between the deep sky and the ooze?
(from Pond)

As a lover of ponds and all the life that supports itself in the murk and the ooze, I can't tell you how much I loved those lines. It's true, ponds are humbling. Beautiful, but resolutely not majestic.

Lovers (and likers) of nature poetry will find much to love and reread in this collection.

Nature lovers and geology geeks will love this collection of poems.

It's difficult to review a collection of poetry, in my opinion. In part because I rarely read the entire thing front to back, and in another part because poetry perceptions shift by the person and by the hour. I studied some of this in my fourth year poetry seminar course. McKay takes on poetry and the wilderness and environment, in a time when the environment is threatened (I'd say it's only gotten worse since the book was published).

I enjoy the mix of poetry and essays. Topics are sharp, a mix of human structure and invention and natural environment. "Stretto" was the work I focused on and it's stuck with me some 10 years after the fact.½