{"product_id":"missing-children-isbn-9780771024252","title":"Missing Children","description":"\u003ci\u003eA daring and innovative collection of new poems by the controversial author of \u003c\/i\u003ePaul’s Case\u003ci\u003e and \u003c\/i\u003eVillainElle.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eMissing Children\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e  is a daring and innovative collection of new poems by the controversial author of \u003ci\u003ePaul\u003c\/i\u003e’\u003ci\u003es Case\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eVillainElle\u003c\/i\u003e. Here, Lynn Crosbie creates a bold fusion of genres by taking traditional elements of the novel – dialogue, plot, and description – and weaving them through a series of narratively linked poems. Centering on a man and a woman obsessively drawn to each other, \u003ci\u003eMissing Children\u003c\/i\u003e unfolds around a forbidden relationship and a series of letters, written by the protagonist, to the parents of missing children. Infused with psychological insight, rich in cultural iconography, and written in spare, clear language, \u003ci\u003eMissing Children\u003c\/i\u003e takes us to the moral fringes of society and challenges us to judge what we find. Crosbie breaks new stylistic and dramatic ground in this compelling, original collection.“Crosbie’s poetry cannot be praised too highly for its stringently surreal beauty and consummate kiss-my-ass class.”\u003cbr\u003e–\u003ci\u003eToronto Star\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Lynn Crosbie is a poet for our times.…[She] uses language as if she invented it.” \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e–\u003ci\u003eVancouver Sun\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eLynn Crosbie\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently \u003ci\u003eMissing Children \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eLiar\u003c\/i\u003e. She is also the author of two novels and the editor of two acclaimed anthologies of feminist writing. She lives in Toronto, where she teaches at the University of Toronto and is a regular contributor to the \u003ci\u003eGlobe and Mail \u003c\/i\u003eand\u003ci\u003e Toronto Life Fashion\u003c\/i\u003e.TWO BIRDS\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe left the house after midnight, running barefoot\u003cbr\u003eher dressing gown parted, lifting like tail feathers.\u003cbr\u003eAnd slid into the car beside me on the bench seat with two pillowcases\u003cbr\u003espilling sheer white and violets. Smoothing her wet black hair,\u003cbr\u003eshe looked at me evenly and took my hand.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCrow on a trembling branch.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe sky was hemmed with lavender, straight-pinned with stars.\u003cbr\u003eIn this silver light I looked back and saw the little one start down the\u003cbr\u003eroad after her.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHis cowboy pyjamas billowing, he canters,\u003cbr\u003elegs unsteady lariats, his arms raised.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe saw him too. Glancing in the rear-view mirror,\u003cbr\u003eshe pressed my knee and we accelerated, coughing up gravel and stones.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI think he was hit, the way he fell down and cried out,\u003cbr\u003ebrown spurs revolving against red,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003enightingale.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA Word about the Poem by Lynn Crosbie  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eThis poem is a code for the book, though it was not intended to be. Cruelty and loss, the birds that mass through the poems as if chasing Tippi Hedren. It is one of the first that I wrote and then I kept moving, coughing up dust and gravel as well. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e***\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eMissing Children\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003estarted as a short poem, in response to a short news piece a friend sent me off the wire, about a man who was arrested for contacting the families of missing children and pretending he had information about them. He then ceased all contact. He was arrested, but the police weren’t sure what to charge him with. That’s all I knew about the case, and I was drawn to it because the story is so acute, yet so wanting, with regard to any conceivable motivation (other than simple malicious mischief). I have written a lot of poems about murderers, and one experimental novel (\u003cb\u003ePaul’s Case\u003c\/b\u003e),\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eand liked to think of them — without hubris by association — as psychoanalytical\/sociological interrogations (like Elliott Leyton’s work in \u003cb\u003eHunting Humans\u003c\/b\u003e) or dramatic monologues in the style of Browning (particularly his work with the depraved). I was always curious, I am still curious about the realm beyond good and evil, where malfeasance, motive, and rough justice lies. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy work with the \u003cb\u003eMissing Children \u003c\/b\u003enarrator is secondary, ultimately, to my engagement with the notion of “missing children.” When I started writing the book, I was noticing detritus in the streets all the time, stray mittens and shoes, barrettes, school projects and so on, objects which seemed to form a jigsaw puzzle, a foundational narrative about fate, about simple or tragic carelessness, about the ways in which we may divine the world through a series of seemingly random clues. The poem\/novel’s protagonist, similarly, reads his world through these prompts; similarly, exists, as writers do,  in “silence, exile, cunning.” The resemblance ends there. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is the first creative work I have written in the voice of a man, and while I enjoyed trying to get the argot and stance right, he is not someone I wish to carry forward — he (who is never named) is the ghost of my own inquiries; the devil that “enquires (terribly) further.” I was so interested in Hemingway and other manly men while writing the book, in the idea of stripping language to its basest form, devoiding it of metaphor and any figurative strategies other than similes — at one point, he explains a fellow criminal’s sexual violence as functioning like an engine and a key. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe book was always an engaging process, artistically;  morally; I found it disquieting, the idea of letting someone be, regardless of my distaste. It is this sort of person, not a Billy the Kid or, again, a fact-freighted criminal, who interests me now: he is the little bug that scatters when the light rises; the mushroom growing in the crevices; the discarded object, whose utility  is entirely subjective, and lost.","brand":"McClelland \u0026 Stewart","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304876331237,"sku":"NP9780771024252","price":17.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780771024252.jpg?v=1767732807","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/missing-children-isbn-9780771024252","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}