The Cult of Quick Repair by Dede Crane
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[ Reviewed in Matrix 81 ]
Coteau Books, 2008
Read by Drew Halfnight
There is something womblike about the stories in Dede Crane’s new collection The Cult of Quick Repair. The warm prose washes over the reader like a benign amniotic fluid, and one has the sense, especially in the opening story “Seers,” which evokes the deep heat and soothing gyrations of an ultrasound, that one could perhaps float effortlessly through life with no trouble at all. But for Crane, the ultrasound reveals babies and tumours alike. Visceral ruptures, including abortions, adultery and death, await the characters in this collection. The dowdy nurse who so lovingly applies the cool, bluish goo, for example, becomes the victim of spontaneous perversions. (more…)
Matrix 80 Reviews
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[ Reviewed in Matrix 80 ]
the rush to here, by George Murray
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[ Reviewed in Matrix 80 ]
Nightwood Editions, 2007
Read by Jakub Stachurski
“From a crack in the dark wall hang loose wires: / give a tug and watch society start / to unravel,” writes George Murray in “A Moment’s Autograph,” one of the opening poems of his fourth collection. It is a fitting introduction, as the four sequences of poems offer a kind of unraveling, an examination of the unseen, unaccounted moments of our lives: (more…)
The Withdrawal Method By Pasha Malla
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[ Reviewed in Matrix 80 ]
House of Anansi, 2008
Read by Susan Briscoe
Many of the stories in The Withdrawal Method feature some version of a young male failing to achieve heroic status. Generally, the young man seems a nice-enough guy — a book store clerk, a daycare or social worker, the kind of guy who doesn’t like to fight; the disappointed party is a child or a woman with fairly reasonable expectations; and the required noble deed is perhaps no more demanding than not falling asleep on the job, not accelerating towards a child on the road, or not watching what you’re pretty sure is child porn. (more…)
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by derek beaulieu
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[ Reviewed in Matrix 80 ]
Afterword by Marjorie Perloff.
Information As Material (UK), 2007.
Read by Jesse Ferguson
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions is conceptual literature for the hard-core visual poetry aficionado. As with most good conceptual work, it’s not likely to end up in the hands of the guy sitting next to you on the bus, but it will register in small coteries of informed readers. This book consists of roughly one hundred pages of “superimposed seismographic images,” which plot the physical occurrence of letters on the pages of a source text. The source here is Edwin A. Abbott’s 1884 science fiction novella of the same title, in which anthropomorphised polygons inhabit a two-dimensional world. (more…)
The Work of Days by Sarah Lang
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[ Reviewed in Matrix 80 ]
Coach House Books, 2007
Read by Aaron Giovannone
Sarah Lang’s first book The Work of Days captures the intimacy and alienation of domestic existence in supple and surprising language. (more…)
Occupational Sickness By Nichita Stanescu
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[ Reviewed in Matrix 80 ]
Translated by Oana Avasilichioaei
BuschekBooks, 2006
Read by Jenny Sampirisi
In her introduction to Occupational Sickness, translator Oana Avasilichioaei states that a translation is “a dialogue on paper. Between two languages. Between two generations. Between two cultures.” The result of that dialogue suggests that each of these linguistic rotations is routed in a translation of bodies. (more…)
THEREFORE REPENT! A Post-Rapture Graphic Novel by Jim Munroe and Salgood Sam
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[ Reviewed in Matrix 80 ]
No Media Kings, 2007
Read by Vincent Tinguely
The glory of science fiction and fantasy is the “what if?” factor. In Therefore Repent!, the authors gleefully explore one deceptively simple premise: “What if the Rapture actually happened?” (more…)
Water Strider by Karen Hofman
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[ Reviewed in Matrix 80 ]
Frontenac House, 2008
Read by Jmae Barizo
This book is not about insects. A solitary six-legged creature does grace the cover however, and Karen Hofman’s debut collection seems to take a few lessons from water striders, which live on the surface of the water and need to push backward in order to generate forward motion. It is this “pushing backwards” that propels the book, which reads almost like a family narrative, chronicling the past with startling audacity. (more…)
Revolver by Kevin Connolly
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[ Reviewed in Matrix 80 ]
House of Anansi Press, 2008
Read by Nick Thran
Kevin Connolly’s 2005 collection, drift, delivers more immediate pleasure than any Canadian poetry collection in recent memory. The poems don’t rely on a voice or personae to carry their momentum forward so much as buzz “like a bee on a psychotropic leash”: what is glib can turn earnest quick, the pastoral can back-flip into a surreal dreamscape, and the more rigid forms feel like aquariums perfectly suited to watching his multifarious digressions swim. drift is so good precisely because it satisfies a certain expectation for multiplicity. (more…)
