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| Short Takes on the Apocalypse
ISBN: 9781771961363
Platform/Publisher: Ebook Central / Biblioasis
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Limited; Download: 7 Days at a Time
Subjects: Literature;
Consisting largely of free verse, prose poetry, couplets, and even found poetry, this latest from Young (Airstream) congeals works that riff off quotes on writing from a wide variety of authors, including Sophocles, Mark Twain, Erica Jong, and Elmore Leonard. This collection is an accomplished one, but for all Young's excellence as a poet, the book rarely rises beyond conceptual play. The book is split into two sections-"Spun Shrunk Broken" and "Too Many Guns in the House"-and moves between two primary modes, contemplative and cutting, respectively. But the choice to create disparate, tonally discrete sections leaves the collection feeling oddly weighted, and only compounds the problem that the contents by section, seen in aggregate, are largely too similar to play off each other well. This leaves the collection falsely unvarying, despite the decided range on display: "Family," "Hearse," and "Chagall's Lovers," for example, could not be more different from "Bite," "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?," "The Boy Who Cried Wolf," or the titular "Short Takes on the Apocalypse." But with its contrasts muddied the collection's edge is dulled. Nevertheless, the collection is definitely worth reading for the beauty of her writing alone, it's just frustratingly shy of being exceptional. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Patricia Young has published eleven collections of poetry and one of short fiction. Her poems have been widely anthologized and translated into Spanish, Mandarin and Romanian. She has received numerous awards for her writing including The Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, the B. C. Book Prize, the Pat Lowther Award, a CBC Literary Prize, Arc's Poem of the Year Award, two National Magazine Awards, the Great Blue Heron Contest and the Confederation Poet's Prize. She has twice been nominated for the Governor General's Award for poetry. Her collection of short fiction, Airstream , won the Rooke-Metcalf Award, was shortlisted for the Butler Prize and named one of the Globe and Mail's Best Books of the Year. |
