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Enlarge Cover
list price: $17.95
edition:Paperback
category: Poetry
published: Oct 2009
ISBN:9780889712393
publisher:
Nightwood Editions
Description
How do we reconcile story with fact? What must one lose for the other to exist? In this debut collection, Rowe explores the nature of mythology and how it morphs in time to retain cultural and personal significance. Folk tales, supernatural creatures, family histories and personal elegies come together to expose the cohabitation of the dead and the living; the relationship between cold absence and stark presence.
Editorial Reviews
From 12 or 20 questions with Stephen Rowe, Rob Mclennan's blog:
Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
I think the questions I want to answer arise as I go along. Obviously with my first book I was concerned with origins and people I associate with having taken me this far, but I didn't plan it that way. I'm currently working on a group of poems linked to relocation between rural and urban settings and vice versa. In this case I'm looking at how people deal with moving, what social factors come into play, etc. I don't know what I will be writing about in the future.
7 - What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
One role of the writer is to entertain, whether in a comic/dramatic sense, or in asking the reader to entertain the considerations the writer is presenting, serious or otherwise. I think there should be a level of enjoyment, of ideas and ways of expressing them, new things the reader has yet to be exposed, but also a healthy flirtation with the uncomfortable. In this sense the writer is much like a film maker or artist just using a different medium. Currently I see the writer struggling in larger culture. There are so many media out there, many with instant gratification as their primary appeal. Reading takes time and, to some degree, dedication on the part of the reader. Not everyone is into that.
— Excerpt from Interview with Rob Mclennan
The seven-poem sequence "Lords of Large Experience" is exceptionally moving, as are "The Wallet" (a superb sonnet with a surprising turn) and the anaphoric dirge "Aubade" ... with this collection, Rowe announces himself as a poet to watch.
--Zachariah Wells, Quill & Quire
Rowe recasts the small tragedies of his life in Gander as soaring for-the-ages tragedy in what amounts to a memorable debut.
--Ariel Gordon, Winnipeg Free Press
