Description: "Bartholomew the Englishman was a 13th century Franciscan friar and scholar whose only surviving work, De proprietatibus rerum (The Properties of Things), was intended as an encyclopedia of the world. The poet has culled certain details from the tome and added many others to construct what he conceives his garden might have been like, assuming he had one, and how he might have described it. He has also repositioned him as a poet. This collection is to be understood as an invention."--
Brief description:
David Solway is the author of many books of poetry including Modern Marriage, which received the QSPELL Prize for Poetry; Franklin's Passage, winner of Le Grand Prix du Livre de Montréal and Reaching for Clear, awarded the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry. Among his prose publications, Education Lost won the QSPELL Prize for Nonfiction and Random Walks was a finalist for Le Grand Prix du Livre de Montréal. A French translation of his writings on education, Le bon prof, was awarded Le Prix Spirale. He has also published several volumes on political subjects, of which The Big Lie: On Terror, Antisemitism, and Identity was a Canadian best-seller.
Review Quotes: "Habibi: I have enjoyed David Solway's poems for decades. Here, as always, Solway writes with a Gravesian dash and brio, taking (and giving) pleasure in a fine vocabulary, a gift for surprising figures, and a striking breadth of reference." -- Richard Wilbur