{"product_id":"strikeslip-isbn-9780771055430","title":"Strike\/Slip","description":"In 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.\u003cb\u003eWINNER OF THE GRIFFIN POETRY PRIZE\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eStrike\/Slip \u003c\/i\u003eand Don Mckay\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“In \u003ci\u003eStrike\/Slip\u003c\/i\u003e, Don McKay walks us out to the uncertain ground between the known and unknown, between the names we have given things and things as they are. . . . McKay’s meditations on time’s evidence acquire a similar heft, proposing, in their discipline of mind and generosity of spirit, a way to be at home in the world. A book of patience, courage, and quiet eloquence.”\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e—Judges’ Citation, 2007 Griffin Poetry Prize\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“McKay doesn’t write about natural science so much as through it, using its terms and principles to explore the science of human nature. A poem about a hike through ‘the broken prose of the bush roads’ gradually, gracefully metamorphoses into a meditation on desire. . . . These exuberantly musical and shrewd poems are ecological in the fullest sense of the word: they seek to elucidate our relationships with our fragile dwelling places both on the earth and in our own skins.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Don McKay’s poems succeed at both the intellectual and the instinctive level. He is an essential poet of our time.\"\u003cbr\u003e—Judges’ citation, 2005 Griffin Poetry Prize\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“He is our most inventive poet, a master of metaphor and a stylist with impeccable tone.”\u003cbr\u003e—Patrick Lane, \u003ci\u003eGlobe and Mail\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eDon McKay \u003c\/b\u003eis the award-winning author of many books of poetry. He has won two Governor General’s Awards for Poetry, won the Griffin Poetry prize for \u003ci\u003eStrike\/Slip \u003c\/i\u003eand shortlisted twice. He is also the author of five books of non-fiction prose. McKay is also known as a poetry editor, and he has taught poetry in universities across the country. In 2008, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada.\u003cb\u003ePOND\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eEventually water,\u003cbr\u003ehaving been possessed by every verb —\u003cbr\u003ebeen rush been drip been\u003cbr\u003egeyser eddy fountain rapid drunk\u003cbr\u003eevaporated frozen pissed\u003cbr\u003etranspired — will fall\u003cbr\u003einto itself and sit.\u003cbr\u003e                             Pond. Things touch\u003cbr\u003eor splash down and it\u003cbr\u003etakes them in — pollen, heron, leaves, larvae, greater\u003cbr\u003eand lesser scaup — nothing declined,\u003cbr\u003enothing carried briskly off to form\u003cbr\u003ealluvium somewhere else. Pond gazes\u003cbr\u003einto sky religiously but also\u003cbr\u003egathers in its edge, reflecting cattails, alders,\u003cbr\u003ereed beds and behind them, ranged\u003cbr\u003elike taller children in the grade four photo,\u003cbr\u003econifers and birch. All of them inverted, carried\u003cbr\u003edeeper into sepia, we might as well say\u003cbr\u003epondered. For pond is not pool,\u003cbr\u003ewhose clarity is edgeless and whose emptiness,\u003cbr\u003ebeloved by poets and the moon, permits us\u003cbr\u003eto imagine life without the accident-\u003cbr\u003eprone plumbing of its ecosystems. No,\u003cbr\u003ethe pause of pond is gravid and its wealth\u003cbr\u003ea naturally occurring soup. It thickens up \u003cbr\u003ewith spawn and algae, while, \u003cbr\u003eon its surface, stirred by every\u003cbr\u003ewhim of wind, it translates air as texture —\u003cbr\u003emottled, moiré, pleated, shirred or\u003cbr\u003eseersuckered in that momentary ecstasy from which\u003cbr\u003eimpressionism, like a bridesmaid, steps. When it rains\u003cbr\u003eit winks, then puckers up all over, then,\u003cbr\u003emoving two more inches into metamorphosis,\u003cbr\u003eshudders into pelt. \u003cbr\u003e                                 Suppose Narcissus\u003cbr\u003ewere to find a nice brown pond\u003cbr\u003eto gaze in: would the course of self-love\u003cbr\u003erun so smooth with that exquisite face\u003cbr\u003erendered in bruin undertone,\u003cbr\u003eshaken, and floated in the murk\u003cbr\u003ebetween the deep sky and the ooze?Poems","brand":"McClelland \u0026 Stewart","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301319430373,"sku":"NP9780771055430","price":15.5,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780771055430.jpg?v=1767737437","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/strikeslip-isbn-9780771055430","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}