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Gaspereau Press - January 24, 2009 - 0 Comments

Fathom

Fathom by Tim Bowling

Reviewed by Jenna Butler

Tim Bowling’s newest collection, Fathom, is grounded in the human and physical landscape of the Fraser River’s salmon fishing industry. Haunting and melancholy, Bowling’s poetry is an homage to the power of memory with a razor awareness of the everpresent nature of death.

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Gaspereau Press - June 14, 2007 - 1 Comment

Two or Three Guitars: Selected Poems

Two or Three Guitars: Selected Poems by John Terpstra

Reviewed by Shane Neilson

A Selected Poems is a celebration of a poet’s career, a summa of their achievement; but it is also something much more democratic, for it offers the reader, heretofore unfamiliar with the mid- or late-career poet (Terpstra is the former), a crash course. I myself have seen the odd Terpstra chapbook over the years, the occasional publication in a periodical, and for purely professional reasons (I double as a doctor) I read his touching prose memoir The Boys, a book which described the life and inevitable demise of his wife’s three brothers to muscular dystrophy. The image of the poet which I had cultivated was a genial guy, a gentle ironist (no savage Swiftian stuff), a versatile poet who could go long in line length, but who could also hem things short. In my estimation, Terpstra was a very comfortable poet, one who wore well, though there wasn’t anything I could recall, a perfect poem or two, that I instantly thought of when his name came again to my attention. But I figured that was probably due to my pathetically limited exposure, and I turned to Two or Three Guitars hopeful that my limited appreciation would be rehabilitated.

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Gaspereau Press - March 23, 2006 - 0 Comments

Change in a Razor-backed Season

Change in a Razor-backed Season by Michael deBeyer

Reviewed by Jon Sookocheff

Michael deBeyer’s second book of poetry, Change in a Razor-backed Season (Gaspereau Press 2005), is a sustained and contemplative look at the moment between knowing and not knowing. “The book is open to doubt,” says deBeyer, “and I felt that if I could write through doubt there would be poetic possibilities beyond.” The result is a taught, muscular second collection well worth an amble through.

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