Description: "Keith Garebian has been a freelance theatre scholar for over forty years and a poet with six collections to his credit. Inspired by American playwright Sarah Ruhl's 100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write, his book is a series of miniature reflections, meditations, and ruminations on subjects encompassing matters of theatre and poetry, two subjects very close to Garebian's heart. The titles alone speak to the little book's uniqueness: "Watching Your Father Die on Stage," "Do Actors Love the Audience?" "Filthy Shakespeare," "Great Roles Can Be Cannibalistic," "Japanese Death Poems," "Poetry and Persian Wrestling," "What Story Does Poetry Tell?" "Armenian Poetry," and "Can There Be Poetry After Donald Trump?" Perceptive, witty, and intimate, the mini musings bubble with a sense of wonder, excitement, and intimacy. A vibrant, provocative series of mini musings that also affords insight into a particular artistic sensibility as several pieces are really slices of memoir and autobiography"--
Brief description:
Keith Garebian is a widely published, award-winning freelance literary, theatre, and dance critic, biographer, and poet. Among his many awards are the Scarborough Arts Council Poetry Award (2010), the Canadian Authors Association (Niagara Branch) Poetry Award (2009), the Mississauga Arts Award (2000, 2008 and 2013), a Dan Sullivan Memorial Poetry Award (2006), the Lakeshore Arts/Scarborough Arts Council Award for Poetry (2003), and an Ontario Poetry Society Award for Haiku (2003). He is the author of 7 collections of poetry.
Review Quotes:
In Mini Musings poet, scholar, and arts journalist Keith Garebian gives his readers a thought-provoking celebration-cum-critique of various lives lived in and among the arts, drenched in the controversial, the poetic, and the rigorously researched. One may not agree with, or even easily digest all of what the author muses upon so alertly, and yet, extremely well-informed prose, coupled with cocky poetic acumen, infuses Mini Musings with a panoply of ideas and emotions "inflamed by some inner mischief ... caught in its own pantomime ... playing charades on themes of timorousness, anxiety, and narcissism"--all crafted to great effect in these immensely entertaining miniatures
--David Bateman, Ph.D. (English Lit/Creative Writing), University of Calgary