Poems Suitable to Current Material Conditions
Description
Poems Suitable to Current Material Conditions demonstrates how seductive everyday wordsÑthose euphemisms and new 'expressions'Ñ often mean more than we think they do: how when we speak them we can be tricked into saying more than we've meant to say. In these mischievous poems about mischievously charming language, Davey shows us how words can be more nimble than we are ourselves, how they take us places we may not have wanted to go, and how likely it is that you've already been there.
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Person
Frank Davey has been pushing at expanding what poetry can do since helping launch Vancouver's Tish poetry newsletter in 1961 and publishing D-Day and After Ð perceptively described by James Reaney as appearing to have been written by his typewriter Ð in 1962. Along the way he has published more than thirty poetry books. His most recent publications are aka bpNichol, a biography of poet bpNichol, and the artist's book Spectres of London Ont. His books have included the ironically postcolonial The Abbotsford Guide to India (1986), winner of the 1987 Canadian Publishers Association Writers Choice Award, Postcard Translations (1988), described by Lynette Hunter as offering readers Òradically new ways not only of relating to national culture but of contributing to it and shaping it, ' and Bardy Google (2010), a flarf book that reviewer Vanessa Lent observes Òconstructs meaning in a way that has no connection to traditional human means of reasoning and storytelling.'