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Staging history: A review of Susan Steudel’s poetry collection, New Theatre
Reviewed in this essay: New Theatre by Susan Steudel, Coach House Press, 2012. A high school teacher once passed an antique book of fairy tales around our creative writing class, asking us to make new poems by blacking out and decorating the printed words. Susan Steudel’s debut book of poetry, New Theatre, reminds me of…
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DNA poetry, thinking like Sherlock, and defining Toronto: Bookishness, Jan. 14, 2013
The little questions “What does Toronto even mean? What kind of city is it? What kind of place do we want it to be? That’s the big question, isn’t it?” – Edward Keenan, Some Great Idea. While you think about how you might answer the big question, try your hand at answering some little questions…
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History, true and fictional: A review of poet Kate Cayley’s “When This World Comes to an End”
When This World Comes to an End By Kate Cayley Brick Books, February 2013 $20 A first book of poems is a beautiful thing. But while this is Kate Cayley’s first poetry volume, she is no newcomer to writing. Her short stories and poems have appeared in journals across the country, she has authored a young adult novel, The Hangman…
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Top book lists, Little Libraries, and book cart drill teams: Bookishness, Dec. 17, 2012
If this is weird, I don’t wanna be normal Poetry makes you weird. The best best Distilling ALL OF THE top book lists. Grinches “In what can only be described as a fairly dick move, the town of Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, has decided to ban Little Free Libraries, the most adorable manifestation of libraries to date.” I…
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Chasing Cures: A Review of Erin Knight’s Chaser
Reviewed in this essay: Chaser by Erin Knight, House of Anansi Press, 2012. Without experiencing the discomfits of illness, we cannot benefit from the advancement of knowledge and understanding that accompanies diagnosis and healing. Erin Knight’s second book of poems, Chaser, released last spring, explores this fascinating contradiction, as well as the pathologies that affect…
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Bookishness: November 5, 2012
Rock (yeah) ing (yeah) chair (yeah) Rock your way to a full battery with Micasa Lab’s (still in development) ipad charging rocking chair. Canadian Poetries Promises poet secrets. How tempting. Fraaaaamed David Kaiser on the essay he didn’t write, “The essay falls in a beguiling category: the zombie fact, claims that are shown to be untrue…
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Bookishness: October 29, 2012
All of the books “Saddling another person with a book he did not ask for has always seemed to me like a huge psychological imposition, like forcing someone to eat a chicken biryani without so much as inquiring whether they like cilantro.” Joe Queenan’s 6,128 favourite books. (image via flickr user zen) Poems for Pussy…
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Choice Poems: Zach Wells and Naomi Guttman
The TRB team is pleased to announce Choice Poems, a semi-regular series of poems on Chirograph curated by the TRB’s Poetry Editor, Moez Surani. For this, the first Choice Poems post, we’re climbing under the covers and into a lover’s heart with a pairing of poems on love and temptation. Zach Wells shows how a lover…
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Bookishness: Week of August 6, 2012
“Wonderful things happen when your brain is empty.” Maira Kalman on the difference between thinking and feeling. A little too much imagining for non-fiction Author of the (until now) best-selling Imagination: How Creativity Works Jonah Lehrer has admitted to inventing quotes in the book. The publisher has pulled the title, and is issuing refunds. Poets in…
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Bookishness: Week of July 16, 2012
Delightful A book fountain in Budapest. Poems like lace Actually, lace poems. 3608 keys Speaking as a former piano student and also as someone who has moved houses four times in the past five years, I can tell you that keyboards, even those with 88 weighted keys, are not pianos. For all those who, like…
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Bookishness: Week of April 30, 2012
A “bipolar rabbit hole of past and present” This Findings interview with Brainpicker Maria Popova about the future of reading taught me about fifteen things, as any encounter with Popova is wont to do. In other doings (she lives in hyperdrive): Popova’s book spine poetry (inspired by National Poetry Month and the delightful Sorted Books). On the intimacy of Draw Something “Draw…
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Bookishness: Week of April 2, 2012
A Slow-Books Manifesto “To borrow a cadence from Michael Pollan: Read books. As often as you can. Mostly classics.” “The refuge of stories.” Steve Almond on grad school as an alternative to therapy. Please please Mr. Postman So much of life allows us (expects us, requires us) to be passive. The letter, though, invites a response,…