Romantic (trade paper)

Description

Drawing on Arthurian myth, the Romantic poets, the ill-fated Great War efforts of the Newfoundland Regiment, modern parenthood, 16-bit video games, and Major League Baseball, these poems examine the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, both as individuals and as communities, in order to explain how and why we are the way we are. At its heart,Romanticinterrogates our western societys idealized, self-deluding personal and cultural perspectives.FromRomantic:Like the Green Knight, stoopingto retrieve his own severed melonfrom the stone floor of a banquethall where it rolls past startledcourtiers to then catch against atable leg and stop, Im fumblingfor an errant thought; without hisflair for theatre, the practiced easewith which he grips a hank ofhair and hoists his head aloft Praise for Mark CallananCallanan has talent to burn, whether producing his seascapes or nature studies or human-subject poems. His eye is exact, his discipline imagist.George Elliott ClarkeBreathtaking, such mastery Its all there: the imagery, the concise language, the musicality, the wit as well as the lyric evocation of transience, the fragility of love, the inevitability of loss. Im not the one in charge of metaphor, Callanan writes in Divination, a wonderfully paradoxical line. It seems to me he is a diviner who has mastered metaphor and much else besides.Ruth Roach PiersonMark Callanans voice is distinctive and confident, funny, grave, occasionally visionary, and his technical gifts are multifold. He is able to give old tropes a new currency and delivers his subjects with convincing urgency.Zachariah WellsIts rare to encounter a poet who can weave economics, wildlife preservation, public policy, personal and civic history, epidemiology and gastronomy together into the tapestry of metaphor using such deceptively simple language.Michael Lista