In January, 1974, Tomas Edward Bojeski, aka Thomas James, put an end to his life by shooting himself in the head with a handgun.  He was only twenty-seven, and had just published his first book, Letters to a Stranger, which would receive one disdainful review describing him as a “pale Plath.”  But Letters would acquire [...]

Drive down a freeway through typical North American urban sprawl – whether it be Toronto, New Jersey, Houston or L.A. – and you will encounter a cluttered yet relentlessly vacuous landscape.  In her latest collection, Expressway, Sina Queyras takes that landscape as an extended metaphor for our contemporary world:  a world of blurring speeds, heavy [...]

With the momentous recent political and economic news, it may be all too easy to overlook what Ezra Pound called the “news that stays news.” Poetry has never pretended to be breaking news, but well executed, it can revive old verities with an immediacy that surpasses any reportage à la CNN.

ANYONE LOOKING AT POETRY published in Canada over the last 40 years or so might conclude that free verse is the default mode. As the anthology Jailbreaks: 99 Canadian Sonnets shows, a great many Canadian poets have also been busy writing in that most traditional form, the sonnet – or at least using the form [...]